









.V 






\0 ^ 












^^^ 









-./• < 
%^%. 



^ \ - 'V 



c^ 











xO^^. 



'i:" 



\^ 



^o 



















•V 






' 





























CHRONICLES Or 
TARPYTOWN AND 
SLEEPY HOLLOW 

By EDGAR n/WHCW BACON 
ILLUSTRATED 



FOURTH IMPRESSION 



0. p. PUTNAH'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS 

1902 






Copyright, 1897 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



•y Tr»nsfer 

^' C. Public Library 

OCT 3- 1939 



Ube Iknicherbocker press, t\cw j^orit 



*-f-_«t_,?.\.? 5 




/.x RECEIVED. 




MOST%(K^^i places are^r^ 

may "foster local pride." ^^prfis^fittle work 
is not offered with anj^^^cn -^iile anticipa- 
tion. The slow ox, y^ke^^^^t Sydney I^anier 
pictures as browsi^ ^^ongh his clover-field 
of poets and^J^gre^t" men and names the 
* ' course-o'-thii>^^ 'sweeps away old landmarks 
like worthless rubbish. It is no less destruc- 
tive in '97 than it was in '37 or at any other 
date, though not a few have been the heroic 
efforts to check its progress. Houses wherein 
generations have lived and died, haunted with 
memories, disappear each year to make place 
for bright new bricks and mortar — that is to 
say, for the planting of the seeds which, in 
time, will yield a crop of new chronicles. 

But the policy of destroying old sites may 
be justly questioned either from an aesthetic or 



lU 



iv preface 

from a business standpoint ; from the first, be- 
cause the sentiment which grows upon the con- 
templation of that which is venerable and 
suggestive to the imagination is a pure and 
worthy one, and from the second because it 
often happens that the chief attraction to 
strangers (who from visitors not infrequently 
become residents), lies not in the new brick 
and mortar, but in the old shingle sides and 
gambrel roofs of colonial houses. 

It is certain that the genius of Washington 
Irving has done a great deal to attract people 
to Tarry town. It seems safe to say that all 
other agencies together have not brought as 
many people into this region as the Legend of 
Sleepy Hollow has. Yet only last year the old 
house which was, according to Mr. Irving, the 
scene of the courtship, the home of Katrina 
van Tassel, was torn down to make way for a 
new schoolhouse. In 1866 Mr. James Miller 
wrote the following : " It is folly to quarrel 
with these changes. Cut down the trees that 
shade your loveliest brook, if you will ; let an 
adventurer dam it with his pin factory ; let 
your old Dutch church go to ruin; let boys 



preface v 

iiack the woodwork and break the window- 
glass ; show your fine taste by sticking your 
smart modern cemeter}^, with its spic-span 
tombstones on the hill-top to overcrow the 
simple relics of the venerable dead who sleep 
in the old gravej^ard below — but remember 
that all this is money out of your pockets. 
. . . Strangers will come to see these places 
that Irving has written about and they will 
not find them. They might have been cared 
for and preserved, and they would have paid 
the interest on all it would cost to keep them 
from destruction." 

That was a good, honest plea, and as useless 
as it was earnest. The '* course-o' -things " 
still browses in our historic field, and is no 
monster after all, but just the world's ox, 
doing the world's work. He has been alwaj^s 
browsing, and the clover has always been 
springing again at his heels. 

This book is a basket full of field fare that 
has been snatched from under his muzzle. If 
you do not want it he will come to it presently, 
and then, after deliberate scrutiny, the basket 
and its contents will go together. 




CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Author's Preface ..... v 

I. — Life and Customs of Eari.y Setti^ers i 

*II.— Vredryk Fi^ypse— His Castle . . 5 

III.— The Story of the Oi^d Dutch Church 39 

IV. — SUNNYSIDE 66 

V. — The Neutrat, Ground . . . .71 

VI. — Myths and Legends .... 95 

VII. — Oi,D Sites and Highways . . . 126 

VIII.— Tarrytown in War Times . . . 144 

IX.— To-Day 149 



Vll 




ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Old Manor House (" Flypse's Castle") and 

Mill, TarryTown . . . Frontispiece 

Drawn by the Author. 

Old Mill — Built by Vredryk Flypse . . 8 
Old Sleepy Hollow Mill .... 20 
Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow . . 40 

From a photograph by F. Ahrens. 

Interior of Old Dutch Church, Sleepy 
Hollow, Prior to its Restoration in 
1897 58 

From a photograph by F. Ahrens. 

' ' Sunnyside. ' ' Home of Washington Irving 66 
Monument to the Captors of Andre . . 84 

From a photograph by F. Ahrens. 

The Jacob Mott House. Home of Katrina 
Van Tassel 88 

Drawn by the Author. 

The Capture of Andre 94 

From a print in the possession of Dr. Coutant. 

The PocANTico River 102 

Old Church Graveyard 112 

" Hulda's grave is close by the north wall." 
ix 



X iriIU6trattons. 

PAGE 

" He Beheld Something Huge, Misshapen, 

Black, AND Towering " . . . .114 

From Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow 

"Just then he Heard the Black Steed 
Panting and Bi^owing Close behind 
HIM " 118 

From Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollorv. 

Bird's-eye View of Tarrytown , . .126 

From a photograph by F. Ahrens, 

"Lyndhurst." Home of Miss Helen 

Gould 130 

Oi,D Lane 140 

The Castile 144 

From a photograph by F. Ahrens. 

Home of Wii,i,iam Rockefeller . . .150 

From a photograph by F. Ahrens. 

Map of Tarrytown 152 




CHPONICLC5 or TT^RRYTOWN 
AND SLEEPY HOLLOW 




CHRONICLES OF TARRYTOWN 
AND SLEEPY HOLLOW 



LIFE AND CUSTOMS OF EARLY SETTLERS 

THE houses of the early settlers were 
not homes of luxury by any means, and 
the thrifty pioneer did not know the taste of 
the bread of idleness. From the first his 
toil included the manufacture of many of 
the implements of labor, and what he or his 
women-folk could not produce they went 
without. For many years not a shop or 
store offered an alternative to home-spun and 
home-made goods. 

The peddler, going his familiar round 
through the wilderness, with a pack that 



2 Cbronicles ot ^arrgtown 

rivalled the bazaars of Constantinople to the 
eyes of unsophisticated Annetjes and Gret- 
chens, was a merchant of consequence ; a guest 
to whom more than ordinary consideration was 
to be shown. The lace that trimmed a holiday 
stomacher, or the pinchbeck that adorned a 
plump hand or dangled against ruddy cheeks; 
the buttons that glittered on the Goedman's 
waistcoat, or the buckles that graced the dance 
in the manor-house kitchen, came from his 
mysterious treasure-box. 

Once in a while a trading-boat put into the 
bay and tied up to a tree on the shore, while 
the word of its arrival, passing from mouth to 
mouth, brought the entire population flocking 
around it. 

The people raised their own stock, their own 
cabbages and corn ; the wives spun and wove, 
brewed and baked, and the most celebrated 
were those who made the best sausages, or the 
most toothsome olykoeks. 

If you could have gone into one of the little 
houses that were scattered here and there 
through the woods, you would have found 
meagre, rude furniture set upon sanded floors, 



an& Sleeps Ibollovv 3 

on whicH a pattern had been marked with a 
broom. A shelf of pewter and delftware was 
the only adornment of the pictureless walls, 
and the only object of grace or beauty in the 
room was apt to be the spinning-wheel, or the 
girl who ran it. 

We must picture houses almost bare of what 
we would consider indispensable to life ; cabins 
as rude as anj^ camp in the woods, devoid of 
books, barren as the hut of a savage. Within 
these dwellings a sturdy hard-working race 
grew up to look upon the Lord of the Manor 
as little less than sovereign in his power and 
wisdom. The lore that their fathers and 
mothers brought from the old country must 
have seemed to them almost like fables ; the 
Master, who divided his time between New 
York and his manor, took the proportions of 
a mysterious prince, while the dominie, who 
made long journeys to them from Hackensack 
three or four times a year, was armed with the 
authority of one who lived in another and 
larger world. 

There is no local record preserved of games 
or amusements, but being Hollanders, and 



4 Cbronicles ot ^arr^town 

therefore tenacious of old customs, it is safe 
to suppose that the tenants of lyord Flypse 
did not forget in their cabins the customs of 
the Fatherland. St. Nicholas, goed heilig 
7naan, no doubt had come over with their other 
household gods, and if there was any secret 
charm that Annetje or Gretchen did not know, 
it was because their mothers were ignorant 
of it. 

Of course, it must be understood that there 
were some among the tenants who were better 
educated than the rest, as, for instance, Abra- 
ham de Revere, who wrote the first minutes in 
the old record-book of the church in 17 15; and 
we know that some soon exchanged their cabins 
for more comfortable houses, for a very few of 
those houses have stood until quite recently. 
But for the most part the tenantry of the estate 
were not enlightened, and their lives were very 
meagre. 




II 



VREDRYK FLYPSE — HIS CASTLE 



ABOUT the year 1680, a royal grant gave 
to Frederick Philips, or Vredryk 
Flypse, the right to purchase and rule a large 
tract of land, of which the Indian village 
of Alipconc was almost the centre. There 
are several accounts of the origin of Flypse. 
According to John Jay the elder, he was of 
Bohemian birth, though his childhood was 
passed in Holland, to which country his 
mother had fled to escape religious persecu- 
tion, she being a Protestant. Very little was 
saved in that pitiful exodus, and the young 
Flypse learned his trade at the carpenter's 
bench like any plebeian little Hollandish lad. 
A second migration, when he was still a youth, 
landed him upon the wharf at New Amster- 
dam, with no capital but his handicraft and 

5 



6 Cbroniclcs ot JTacrgtown 

his brains. Another account makes him a 
native of Friesland, born in 1626, son of Fred- 
eric Felipse. It agrees with the former as to 
immigration and the carpenter's bench. 

After a few years he abandoned carpentering 
and engaged in the fur trade, showing both 
slirewdness and capacity for business, in proof 
of which his marriage may be considered. A 
rival fur-trader, named de Vries, had the mis- 
fortune to die and leave a young widow whose 
attractions were no doubt enhanced by her 
wealth. The picture that Vredryk wanted 
was set in a golden frame. 

Margareta Van Hardenbroek de Vries has 
been greatly praised for the wifel}^ quahties 
she evinced. She, having a daughter by her 
first husband, became the mother of Flj^pse's 
three children, and his helpmate till he became 
firmly established as a man of influence in the 
colony. We infer, from such meagre data as 
can be obtained, that the wedding took place 
about 1660, and Margareta' s death more than 
twenty years later, for her eldest children were 
nearly grown when her husband moved to his 
estate of Philipsburg, and a resolution of 



anc> Sleeve fboUovo 7 

thanks offered to her by the tenantry of the 
manor proved her to have been living at that 
time. 

A narrator of the j^ear 17 15 (Abraham de 
Revere, in his preface to the old church 
records) states that it had ' ' Pleased his Royal 
Majesty of England, Scotland, France, and 
Ireland, defender of the faith, etc., about the 
year of our Lord 1680, to grant by prerogative, 
consent, and license, to the Honorable Fred- 
ryk Flypse, to freely buy in a certain sale of 
estate, a certain tract of land and valley situ- 
ated in the county of Westchester, in America, 
beginning at the place of Spuyten Duyvel's 
kill and running north along the river to and 
on the kill of Kitch Awong (Croton), etc., as 
in the license and patent contained," and that 

Lord Flypse had contracted with [record 

torn] * ' to let any one settle on said land free, 
for certain stipulated years in order that it 
should as soon as possible be cultivated and 
settled." 

The manor of Philipsburg came into Sir 
Vredryk's hands by several conveyances. 
Some of it was granted by the Crown, and a 



8 Cbronfcles ot tTarr^town 

portion purchased ; nor were all of his posses- 
sions acquired at the same time. Abraham de 
Revere was only partly right when he wrote 
his preface to the records of the old church. 
The site of Tarrytown cost only a few pounds 
of tobacco, hardware, and cloth, and a little 
rum. The entire catalogue of titles and 
grants, some confirmatory of others, extended 
from 1672 to 1693, when the signatures of Wil- 
liam and Mary completed the series. The 
grant given by Governor Andros, confirming 
the Tarrytown or Pocantico purchase, is dated 
1680. 

No very positive statement can be made re- 
garding the exact date of Flypse's settlement 
upon the manor. He built a manor-house, 
mill, and church on the Pocantico. 1683-84 
and '85 are variously given as the years in 
which the two former buildings were finished ; 
but the same tradition which informs us that 
the house was completed in 1683 or 1684, pre- 
sents to us a puzzle in the avowal that the bell 
and furniture for the church came over in the 
same vessel which brought the brick used in 
the chimney and other parts of the dwelling. 



m\t> Sleeps Ibollow 9 

What makes this singular is the fact that the 
date cast in the metal of the bell is 1685. So 
that it appears that a bell was cast in Holland 
in 1685, and brought to this country two or 
three years earlier along with some brick that 
was used in a building, or buildings, erected in 
1683. As will be readily seen, the solution to 
the diflSculty will be found in the fact that the 
transport made several voyages. Vredryk 
Flypse was a large ship owner for that day, 
and his vessels did a considerable carrying 
trade between Holland, England, and the 
colonies. 

One matter which the wiseacres have settled 
in a very off-hand way is that of the seniority 
of the Yonkers' manor-house over that of 
Tarry town. I believe this to be an error. All 
the evidence seems to point to the fact that the 
Tarrytown mansion was erected too soon after 
the property was acquired to admit of another 
having been built on any part of the domain in 
the meantime; and there is not a shadow of 
trustworthy evidence that the house of Yon- 
kers can lay claim to a date prior to the mar- 
riage of Eva Philips with Van Cortlandt, at 



lo Cbronlcles ot ^arr^town 

which time her father bestowed with her hand 
that part of the estate in dowry. It is not 
probable that Flypse lived at Yonkers, though 
there were undoubtedly shanties and a mill 
there at a very early time. The proprietor's 
journeys to Tarrytown were made from New 
York on horseback or by yacht. 

Flypse was fortunately a man of taste as 
well as of business capacity. He chose for the 
site of his *' Castle " the sloping bank at the 
head of the bay we have already referred to. 
It was a sunny spot, reclaimed by the wood- 
man's axe from the forest. We can picture 
the new cornfields, backing against the sterile 
line of pine shadow and guarded by grotesque 
scarecrows that bravely flaunted cast-off great 
coats of linsey-woolsey and three-cornered 
beavers, worn with a rakish slant. 

By the water's edge a new wharf of huge 
green logs confined the channel of the stream. 
Here was moored a curious vessel, with broad 
bows and stern set high in air, her bulwarks 
generously carven, and her cordage in what 
would seem, to the modern mariner, to be inex- 
tricable confusion. Groups of sturdy workmen, 



and Sleeve Ibollow n 

unloading the yacht of her brick, hardware, or 
other cargo ; Dutch carpenters, plying the saw 
and broad-axe as they fitted the huge timbers 
for the new building ; a gang of negroes making 
the place ring with their laughter and songs as 
they carried burdens to and fro — all these might 
be seen busily engaged in rearing the manor- 
house. Back and forth among them, direct- 
ing, encouraging, reproving, always alert, 
went the master. A man to be feared was 
Flypse. His erect figure and keen face marked 
a leader. In the affairs of the State, the count- 
ing-room, or the plantation it required a bold 
will to oppose him. 

As the building progressed, the lady of the 
manor, perhaps, visited the place which was to 
be her home for a short time and where her 
children's young stepmother was afterguards to 
eclipse her so utterly that the country-side 
should forget that she had ever lived. No 
doubt the four bright children explored, as 
children of this later day do, the wonders of 
the witching stream that swirled and rushed 
over sunken bowlder and fallen tree-trunk to 
the place where their much respected father 



12 Gbconiclea ot Caccgtown 

was superintending the building of the dam. 
There the future grave chief-justices caught 
trout, and the embryo great dames, their sweet 
sisters, were mightily terrified at the distant 
sight of a chance bear. 

At last the house was finished. It was 
solidly built of stone. Its walls were — and are 
still — of unusual thickness, and such care has 
been taken lately to cover them over, that time 
and the weather can find no point of attack. 
The roof was built, after the fashion of those 
days, with a double slant, and in its hewn 
timbers is a prophecy of strength for years 
to come. 

In the southwest walls of the cellar two port 

holes or embrasures were cut, from which pro- 
truded the muzzles of small howitzers ; they 
regulated trade as well as war. The old doors 
at front and rear of the hall were divided into 
upper and lower halves, and secured by heavy 
transverse bars of iron-bound oak, while the 
inner doors connecting the rooms show in their 
peculiar joiner work the hand of the Holland- 
ish carpenter of the seventeenth century. 
A squarely built, honest, and substantial 



anC) Sleeps IboUow 13 

house was this, where tenants could flock for 
protection, and an army of savages be safely 
defied — as long as provisions held out. That 
there was very little danger of a scarcity in the 
larder we may judge from the generous pan- 
tries and cellars that fill their proportion of the 
old house. A tradition tells how Flypse, being 
annoyed by the thieving propensities of his 
slaves and some domesticated Indians, built a 
smoke-house, or room, in the ample chimney, 
and kept in his own pocket the key of a store- 
room large enough to victual a garrison. 

From the rear end of the wide hall, which at 
present occupies the centre of the mansion, runs 
a flight of stairs winding by three easy stages 
to the floor above. South of the upper landing 
is a succession of chambers opening into one 
another, all of considerable size, and the inner 
one, where probably stood the martial four- 
poster, as big as a hospital ward. 

Flypse-his-Castle was a very large afikir in 
its day. Its proprietor was one who had the 
reputation of being the best housed man in the 
colony. So strong had this impression become 
that, in 1689, a popular demand was made that 



14 Cbi'oniclcs of G:aiTi5town 

the public money of New York (amounting 
to ;£"773. I2S.) be removed from the fort to 
Flypse's house. 

History and tradition do not seem fully to 
agree concerning the manner of man that 
Flypse was. The traditionary Philips was a 
rather holy man, whose pride was in the 
church he built, whose tastes were rural, who 
was a pleasant, patriarchal old fossil, and to 
whom the winds of existence were somewhat 
miraculously tempered — but history makes no 
mention of his having even been a member of 
the church he built (at a day when church- 
membership meant little) ; documents and 
deeds show him to have been not only a suc- 
cessful merchant but a keen and powerful 
politician, who headed with Bayard and Van 
Cortlandt the patrician party in the colony. 
Before him and his immediate associates the 
strong lycislerian faction gave way ultimately, 
and by their appointed judges I^eisler was con- 
demned to death. So far from being noted for 
his peaceable adherence to the Dutch Reformed 
Church, he was at one time hotly charged with 
being a Papist. 



anO Sleeps Ibollow 15 

There is something pathetic in this attempt 
of tradition to make a pleasant milk-and-water 
esquire out of the strong, resolute, hard-headed 
Bohemian carpenter boy, who fought his way 
with hard knocks from the obscurity of noth- 
ingdom to power as a patrician leader. He 
must have had, in common with many another 
self-made man, a large talent for forgetting ; 
but, though he had lived among the people, he 
was not one of them in the sense of having 
learned their shibboleths. He worked always 
to compel fate to yield him a compensation for 
the privations of his youth. 

On the 17th of October, 1683, the first popu- 
lar assembly held in the colonies convened at 
New York and framed a ' ' charter of liberties, ' ' 
wherein it was ordained that " every free- 
holder and free-man might vote for representa- 
tives without restraint." In this charter, as 
ratified, we find Flypse's name first upon the 
list of Aldermen. It mattered little to him 
through what channel power fiowed to him ; 
he trusted himself to hold by his wisdom and 
strength that which he gained by his tact. 

He bitterly opposed Leisler, the popular 



i6 Cbroniclea of ^arr^town 

leader, and was one of those two ofi&cers who 
claimed in behalf of the colony, and as the 
representatives of the government, the letters 
of instruction brought over by Riggs from 
England. These letters were addressed to 
whoever might be in power. In a paper by 
Colonel Bayard, styled a ' ' Modest and impar- 
tial account of several grievances and great op- 
pressions, etc., etc," the writer makes a long 
showing of error and crime on the part of Mr. 
Jacob Iveisler, and in the course of his narrative 
refers to Mr. Fred'k Philips and Stephanus 
Van Cortlandt as * ' Left in trust by the Lieut. 
Gov. for the keeping of the peace and legally 
governing their majesties' province, which they 
carefully and honestly would have discharged 
the trust reposed in them if they had not been 
prevented by this violator of our laws and lib- 
erties (Leisler), and that with more renown to 
their majesties as well as to the satisfaction of 
their liege people inhabiting the domain, etc. , 
etc." 

An account of the transaction of which Bay- 
ard especially complained has been preserved 
in the more legal form of a certificate signed 



an& Sleepg Ibollow 17 

by Flypse and Van Cortlandt later. It reads : 
' * Leisler sent over one of his pretended lyieu- 
tenants and two Sergeants for said Riggs (the 
bearer of the dispatches) who sent for us whose 
names are hereunto subscribed." They then 
went with him to the house of Leisler within 
the fort, where the latter not only disputed 
with them the possession of the papers, but, to 
use their own language, * ' The said Leisler told 
the said Riggs that we had nothing to do with 
the said government. That we were Papists, 
and the packets were directed to and belonged 
to him, and thereupon commanded and took 
the said packets out of the said Riggs his 
hands, bidding us to depart the said fort hav- 
ing nothing to do therewith — and used many 
opprobrious words to both of us." The *' op- 
probrious words " were what rankled the 
longest, and perhaps had their share in tight- 
ening the rope around the neck of their author. 
When Sir Henr}^ Sloughter arrived in New 
York with gubernatorial power, Flypse and his 
colleague stole a march on Leisler, and while 
he anxiously awaited the new comer they 
boarded his vessel, and loading him with com- 



i8 Cbronfcles ot ^arri^towu 

pliments and civility brought him on shore. 
To cap this cotip d'etat, their foe, grimly en- 
sconced in the fort, suspiciously refused admit- 
tance to the new Governor. If the carpenter 
was skilful in driving home his nail, he was at 
least fortunate in having an enemy complacent 
enough to clinch it for him on the other side. 
So Sloughter was won; but so the two con- 
spirators did not gain the seat they afterwards 
occupied in his council, for in the instructions 
which the new Governor brought over with 
him, the names of both appeared with all the 
attesting formulae of the court at Whitehall. 
Under the great seal Frederick Philips was first 
named upon the list of councilmen to be called. 

How Flypse found time, amid all the duties 
and troubles of his political career, to direct 
an extensive business and still give thought to 
his manor at Philipsburg, it is hard to see. 
Attend to it he did, however, and very 
thoroughly. 

A few years after the grant was secured, he 
had not only finished his house but a mill as 
well, where his tenants came to have their 
corn ground, and where the Indians and 



anJ) Sleepy IboUow ig 

Whites used to 'carry on those trading opera- 
tions that gave the aborigines some of their 
first impressions of Caucasian superiority. The 
old mill still stands, its empty granary a refuge 
for bats and squirrels and other untamed folk ; 
its walls creak with the swaying of the willows 
that lean against it, and idly dabble their finger- 
tips in the stream ; yet the ancient structure 
wears its centuries very lightly. It speaks elo- 
quently for the methods of Flypse, who as car- 
penter, trader, or legislator has left no record 
of half-done work. Whether he undertook to 
erect a mill or elevate a governor, he did not 
fail to accomplish thoroughly what he took in 
hand. 

The mill is a little more than a rod south of 
the house. Its timbers are of unusually heavy 
hewn oak, and its roof is shaped like that of 
the house. The sides are shingled, not with 
such puny shingles as we have to-day, but 
mighty ones, made of cedar that has forgotten 
how to grow since then. A treasured speci- 
men hangs over my table ; it is carven with rain 
and warped by sun and wind, while the years 
have painted it to a gray that no other colorist 



20 Cbconiclce of {Tarrgtown 

can match. Throughout its two feet of length 
are seams and fissures and cross cuts where the 
elements have fairly charred it. It tapers from 
a thickness of half an inch, at what was once 
the thin end, to a ragged paper-edge that will 
vibrate under a breath. Until very recently 
the old mill was covered with its fellows, all 
fastened to their places upon the oaken back 
strips by two and a half inch wrought nails. 

At rear and front of the building are the old- 
fashioned, horizontally divided, Dutch doors. 
These, and the little windows with which both 
sides of the buildings are lavishly besprinkled, 
still swing upon hinges that would make the 
heart of an antiquar}^ leap for jo3^ 

In its day the old mill is said to have been a 
port of entry, and the vessels whose manifests 
were inspected there belonged for the most 
part to the dignified gentleman who sat in the 
seat of customs — at least, so tradition asserts. 
I have failed to find record of any other port 
of entr}^ situated so far from the sea as this one 
was. 

The millpond dam was a picturesque affair 
of great logs, propped b3^ a small forest of 



anD Sleeps "tooUow 21 

lesser logs. A foot-bridge and hand-rail 
crossed the top. The height of the structure 
was probably about twenty feet, and below it 
was a deep pool, towards the lower end of 
which a wooden wharf received the cargoes of 
the vessels that entered there. These craft, 
some at least, proceeded past New York with- 
out dropping anchor, to and from the West 
Indies and even from Holland. They were 
queer tubs, smaller than we trust for ocean 
travel nowadays, but commanded by men very 
singular in build and costume, yet intrepid 
navigators ; tars as adventurous as any the 
world has ever known. Probably the imports 
were of such a character as would shock good 
temperance people of to-day. In a report to 
the Crown, written August 6, 1691, and signed 
by Flypse and his associates, appears this para- 
graph : * ' New Yorke is the metropolis, is situ- 
ate upon a barren island bounded by Hudson's 
River and the East River that runs into the 
sound and hath nothing to support it but trade 
which flows chiefly from flour and bread they 
make of the corn the west end of I^ong Island 
and Sopus produces, which is sent to the West 



22 Cbrontcles of tTarretown 

Indies and there is brought in return from 
thence a Hquor called Rumm, the duty whereof 
considerably iyicreaseth your majesty s revenue.''^ 
In the light of such a document we can easily 
understand how the old mill came to be a port 
of entry. That the ojfficer who made such a 
report to the Crown should be comptroller of a 
port where his own ships unloaded, no doubt 
* ' mightily increased ' ' his own revenue. 

During the troublous times of which some 
mention has been already made, I^ady Mar- 
gareta died, and Flypse, with his usual decision 
and energy, looked about him straightway for 
another wife. 

He found before long a worthy successor to 
Margarita, in Catharina, the daughter of old 
Oloflfe Van Cortlandt and, therefore, the sister 
of his colleague, Stephanus Van Cortlandt. 

The marriage took place soon, and Catharina 
Van Cortlandt, widow of John Dervall (who 
had had the kindness to leave her a large 
fortune) became Lady Catharina Philips of the 
Manor of Philipsburg. Singularly enough, 
this is the only Lady Philips that tradition 
recognizes. 



ant) Sleeps Ibollow 23 

This alliance'made Flypse the richest man in 
the colony. While strengthening himself by 
this means, he was neither lax in business nor 
lazy in politics as his years and his influence 
grew together. 

I have attempted to give in the foregoing 
pages a faint idea of the character of Flypse, 
or rather, to indicate the lines upon which a 
study of that strong personality may be pur- 
sued. It is a well-worn thought, yet I venture 
it again — that no man's greatness must be 
measured by the .size of the world he lives in. 

That Vredryk was a statesman, though liv- 
ing and laboring in a petty State, the inadequate 
record of his acts show. With strength of 
will, clear judgment, and ambition, he was, at 
the beginning of the eighteenth century the 
foremost man in what is now the Empire State. 
Although by nature and all his sympathies and 
circumstances the leader of the "patrician" 
party in the infant colony, he appears to have 
been the first American chosen by popular vote 
as a popular representative in the little city of 
his adoption. With his hands deep in every 
broth which his colleagues Bayard and Van 



24 Cbionicles ot ^arvgtown 

Cortlandt brewed; with his head teeming with 
wonderful and carefully devised schemes for 
exercising the power held nominally by the 
Governor of the colony, he yet managed to make 
so good a showing to the Crown that the seal 
ol Whitehall was secured to endorse his acts. 

Beginning life with the saw and hammer in 
his hands, he laid them down to commence the 
building of a fortune, which seemed to his as- 
sociates colossal. Coveting an estate, he se- 
cured one of the fairest in the colony, where 
we may well believe his word was law. 

One episode in the life of Flypse we must 
not omit to mention. As a merchant his ves- 
sels were, in common with all that sailed the 
seas at that day, subject to the dangers inci- 
dent to an infant commerce. The greatest of 
these was that arising from piracy. Marauders 
of every grade preyed upon the vessels which 
crossed from the old world to the new. At 
last, upon the suggestion of Colonel I^iving- 
stone, of New York, William Kidd was com- 
missioned to act as a sort of marine patrol, 
or constable whose duty it was to protect the 
merchantman. 



an& Sleeps IboUow 25 

The history of Captain Kidd's own career, 
his perversion to the lawless class he was sent 
to make war upon, and his subsequent capture 
and execution, are familiar to all. 

But in the heat of political strife there were 
not found wanting those who noticed that the 
vessels of Flypse and his friends were not called 
upon to pay toll to the privateer. A whisper, 
which was not stilled for many years, coupled 
the names of Flypse and Bayard with that of 
the notorious pirate. 

Was it from this source that that other 
legend arose in which a certain rock — still 
standing like a sentinel upon the river wall 
within rifle range of Flypse' s Castle — gained 
the name (by which it is known to-day) of 
'' Kidd's Rock?" 

Flypse died in 1702. The son who ruled 
in his stead was Adolphus, his second born. 
Philip, the elder, married a lady from the Bar- 
badoes and died young, leaving one son, who 
took his father's christened name. This Philip 
Philips was afterwards Judge of the Supreme 
Court. He had four children, to whom the 
estate of Philipsburg reverted, and out of whose 



26 Cbronicles of Carr^town 

hands it passed at the time of the Revolution ; 
for Frederick Philips, great grandson of the 
founder of the house, was as weak and vacil- 
lating a fellow as ever let a wealthy estate 
slip through his fingers. He first thought 
he favored the Continental cause, and then 
changed his mind and was sure he belonged to 
the Tory party. While he was making up his 
mind he was exiled to Connecticut on parole. 
First he thought he would keep his parole, 
and afterwards was induced to break it, and 
the result was that he was surprised into an 
activity that resulted in the confiscation of 
Philipsburg by New York. 

But this did not occur for a long time. 
When Frederick the first died, his son Adol- 
phus took charge of the baronial affairs. That 
he did so to the entire satisfaction of all parties 
concerned is evident from a memorial of thanks 
presented by his tenants in 1716. It is worth 
publishing if only as an evidence of the amount 
of laudation that one fairly respectable man 
could stand in those days. It runs as follows : 
Resolved, That we take in hand and com- 
plete, in as far as possible, our resolution to 



anD Sleeve Ibollow 27 

show the duty of thanks which we owe for the 
many mercies done to your servants our parents 
of blessed memory, but especially to us your 
present servants and women servants, from 
time to time by your Hon. Right Honorable 
Lord and father of blessed memory, as also 
from your honored mother of blessed mem- 
ory, the Lady Margarita, as also by your 
Lord Father's last wedded wife. Lady Catha- 
rina, as also by your Honorable Right Honora- 
ble and Noble, very wise and provident, our 
Lordship the Lord Adolphus Philips, viz : for 
the many benefits done to us your faith- 
ful servants and women servants through 
various favorable means and good instructions 
— we therefore pray with all reverence that 
your honored Lordship will receive these our 
small thanks according to our small deserts, 
and we your honored and obedient servants 
will remain obligated and will ever be your 
honorable very obedient humble servants. ' ' 

Imagine the feelings of the man who should 
receive to-day such an epistle as that, couched 
in the purest of low Dutch! A Hollandish 
pedagogue must have framed those sentences. 



28 Cbroniclc0 of ^arrgtown 

Cornelius was a bachelor. He was a man of 
talent and influence. His life was passed be- 
tween his estate and the metropolis, where he 
filled the ofiice of Assemblyman, and was, like 
his nephew Philip, a Judge of the Supreme 
Court. Indeed, Adolphus seemed to inherit 
not only a large portion of his father's wealth, 
but considerable of his character. He died in 
1750, aged eighty-five years. In person he 
was tall and of commanding presence. 

The member of all the Philips family to 
whom tradition points as an object of venera- 
tion is the stepmother, Catharina. She, too, 
had her memorial regularly recorded by the 
venerable Abraham de Revere, in which lauda- 
tion chokes itself. Her name is first on the list 
of members of the church she possibly helped 
to build. Before it, is the preamble " First and 
before all. ' ' Her title was sometimes written, 
" The Right Honorable wise pious and very 
provident lady, widow of I^ord Fredryk Flypse, 
who did here very praiseworthily advance the 
cause of religion. ' ' 

So we see that while the lady was pious, 
wise, and very provident (charitable ?), which 



ant) Sleeps tbollow 29 

makes her a truly phenomenal woman, her 
lord is almost damned with faint praise. But 
apparently Catherina's distinguishing piety 
began with her widowhood. Certain it is, that 
both the husband and wife on state occasions 
graced with their presence the ** thrones," 
cushioned and canopied, that flanked the old 
octagonal pulpit, there to be admired by the 
less comfortable, but no less contented tenants. 
And certain it is that both the Lord and his 
Lady lie in less dignified but no less solemn 
state beneath the church floor to-day. 

We must not forget Flypse's daughters. 
Kva, his adopted child (according to Doctor 
Todd), married Jacobus Van Cortlandt, and 
that part of the estate where Yonkers now 
stands was given to her for a marriage por- 
tion ; of one of her descendants we will have 
something further to say. The second daugh- 
ter, Annetje, married Philip French. In 1702, 
Lord Cornbury was made Governor, and that 
same year French became Mayor. He married 
upon his appointment to oflSce. It will be re- 
membered that this same year, 1702, Vredryk 
Flypse died. 



30 Cbronicles ot ^arr^town 

It is not altogether easy to dismiss the char- 
acters who moulded the thought and manners 
of many people, and who retained for nearly a 
century large political influence and power in 
what are now the counties of Westchester and 
New York. 

The tenants of the Flypse estate were the 
ancestors of many of the people who are enjoy- 
ing the nineteenth-century luxuries of lighting 
and locomotion with us to-day. We are wont 
to bestow our gratuitous pity upon the victim 
of saddle and sail-boat and monthly post-man, 
in the far-off days when wheat-fields waved 
from the manor-farm to the forest edge; when 
the red deer drank by the Pocantico, and the 
red men brought furs to trade for ' * rumm ' ' at 
the mill ; when from some urchin's pocket a 
chestnut was dropped among the corn rows, 
where now the great tree with its twenty feet 
girth lifts a coronal of plumes in the centre of 
the forty-acre lot ; but have we more of life, of 
energy, of those experiences that go to make 
up our sum of pain and pleasure than they 
had? 

When the property passed from the hands 



anO Sleeps Ibollow 31 

of its original Owners, one of the old-time 
guests who possibly looked back regretfully at 
the last pages of that chapter was George 
Washington. Tradition (the jade) tells how 
the father of his country courted Miss Philips 
before he met the admirable Mrs. Custis; and 
twenty years ago one could see the room in 
which he slept, with furniture (so they said) 
unchanged. 

To some people who have been accustomed 
to regard the Flypse family as among the 
* ' Patroons, ' ' it will probably be a great disap- 
pointment to learn that they had no claim to 
that very Dutchest of titles being lords by an 
English creation, and not through the favor 
of the States- General of Holland. 

When after the Revolution the manor of 
Philipsburg was confiscated by the new gov- 
ernment of New York, the lands becoming for- 
feit by the attainder of Sir Frederic Philips, 
last of his name, one of the principal grantees 
was a descendant from an ancient political ad- 
versary of Vredryk the first. This was Gerard 
G. Beekman. Years before, it will be re- 
membered, Eva Philips married Jacobus Van 



32 Cbroniclea ot ^arrgtown 

Cortlandt. Her granddaughter, or great-grand- 
daughter, Cornelia Van Cortlandt, married 
Gerard Beekman, and so came back to the 
manor and house her ancestor founded. 

At the beginning of its second chapter of 
history the old house had to undergo repairs 
and alterations. A north end was added, 
bearing much resemblance — externally — to the 
old part, but not so solidly built. Within, the 
difference in ceiling, doors, and mantels are 
marked. At the same time a front oflQce was 
added to the mill, and that part is now greatly 
damaged by time. The moral of this seems to 
be that a house built by a carpenter has the 
odds in its favor. 

The generation that came in with the Revo- 
lution passed away — all but old Mrs. Beekman 
— who had been Miss Van Cortlandt. She 
lived on and on past her generation, known 
and loved as a I^ady Bountiful, the good 
genius of the neighborhood, and died not so 
long ago but that many people still remember 
her. She used to tell how during the war of 
Independence she had lain awake all one night 
in the old manor-house, listening to the rumble 



anD Sleeps Ibollow 33 

and grumble oF the Continental Army as it 
passed. Commenting upon this story, one to 
whom she had told it said in after years that 
he did not understand how she came to be in 
that house at the time, when it w^as Philips' s 
property. Her relation to the Philips family 
will explain that fully. 

Before Mrs. Beekman's death (she lived to 
be nearly a hundred) the broad acres of the 
estate had been cut down and a host of 
strangers had crowdedJjitfiLihe,,town, lured by 
the railroad that'l^i^p^Ji **iBfi^^^vpf the 
pleasant bay<;^i^ haSa5aa3nB©£tro}^A^ en- 
tirely by culting off fJfi^^SS tSfikSbction. 

After a wliile" the house passed fro^/the 
Beekman's hands. T^Ir. Fobf^^'it^^^^i^fme oc- 
cupied it and Captain Jacob Storm, who was a 
descendant of one of the old settlers. It be- 
came the property of the late Ambrose Kings- 
land, who bought it because he had an estate 
adjoining, and who " improved ^^ it almost past 
recognition. One of the family removed the 
machinery of the old mill ; another clapboarded 
the sides of the house, not liking the looks of 
the stone walls, and made other additions and 



34 Cbronicles of Q:arrstovvn 

alterations. There are now, I think, only two 
old mantels left of the several that I can re- 
member, and these are in the modern , or Beek- 
man, part of the house. Some new doors, a 
row of dormer windows in the roof, and a bal- 
cony and piazza are also of a modern date; 
while a west addition completely hides the 
port-holes where the howitzers protruded from 
their lair in the cellar. Still in the southwest 
corner of the mill a number of small holes seem 
to show where a load of shot at some time 
missed a probable designation on the creek. 

The big chimney on the west side gave place 
to a smaller one in the centre, and its Holland 
bricks are now lining part of a more modern 
house in the village. Verily, the old house has 
been changed, but its walls and roof retain their 
integrity ! 

I hardly know how to classify, or where to 
mention, the many odds and ends that seem 
only so many component parts of a historic 
rubbish-heap, a curious jumble of lonely and 
non-assorted legends and relics that are like 
the scraps and the drift that the wask of years 
has deposited as tidemarks in the old mill. 



anD Slcepe Ibollow 35 

There, lying among shavings of more modern 
pine, one may come across a piece of leather 
belting and cups of the elevator still hanging 
therefrom, marking a comparatively recent 
date in grain milling, and find still lower down 
a bit of century-carved oak, or a bolt that was 
driv^en when New York was still the far west. 
So, like witnesses of old-time lawsuits, or like 
the memories of old men touching themes that 
our cyclopaedias have forgotten to mention, 
there comes a rabble of hints and many per- 
plexing half-lights insisting upon our recogni- 
tion of them. What shall we do with them ? 
Where place the date of the vessel that found- 
ered by the mill, whose last rib alone marked 
the place of her resting w^hen we were boys ? 
How tell the story of the old bones that a 
frightened tenant found in the cellar corner of 
the manor-house — and left there ? What is 
there of story connected with the spurs that were 
found in the same uncanny corner ; did they 
belong to the bones ? Were the remains really 
human, of foe, or slave, or lost traveller, of 
colonial or revolutionary date ; or did some cel- 
lar-housed watch-dog leave his larder there ? 



36 Cbronicles ot Q;arrstown 

What shall we say of the little scales that have 
presumably descended from Vredryk Flypse, 
and which, up to the time of his death, 
were in the possession of Mr. Jas. S. See, of 
North Tarrytown ? If they would tell us 
whether they gave good weight or not we 
might have something of a clue to the hand 
that first held them. When the last resident 
Philips collected his last rents he left the little 
gold scales at the house of Mr. See's ancestor, 
where they remained for more than a century. 
The}^ are now treasured by Mrs. James Hawes. 
another descent of that old time tenant. 

In the old church is an old oak bier — who 
lay upon it first ? ' Whose ghostly hand is it 
that rattles the door of the south parlor of the 
old house when no one can be seen there ? 
These are questions that the historian who 
picks them up must drop as he drops the piece 
of leather belting or the wrought bolt back to 
their rubbish-heap again. Someone else may 
find in any one of them the clue to a mystery, 
or the hinge for a tragedy to turn upon. A 
few years more, and probably the old mill 
would have dropped to ruin for want of care, 



ant) Sleepy? Ibollow 37 

but for repairs completed at the time of this 
writing. A flood several years ago did dam- 
age. Some leaks in the roof made more mis- 
chief than a century of storm beating could 
have done, and the willows that folded the 
creases of their mighty trunks about its eaves 
tried for a share in the conclusion. And the 
inevitable downfall has only been postponed. 
We have little regard for anything the value 
of which is based upon sentiment only. A 
few years, at most, and some factory or 
dwelling must take its place, while men of an 
antiquarian turn of mind dispute about the site 
of this ancient port. Then, in some still, moon- 
lit midnight, we can fancy that the old-time 
worthies will steal across from their encamp- 
ment on the hillside opposite, and grieve be- 
cause they cannot find in the great house, 
wooden-cased and land-girt as it is, any trace 
of Flypse — his Castle. 



Right well I wote, most mighty soveraine 
That all this famous antique history 
Of some the abundance of an ydle braine 
Will iudged be, and painted forgery, 
Rather than matter of iust memorie ; 



38 



Gbronlcles ot (Tarri^town 



Sith none that breatheth living aire doth know 
Where is that happy land of Faerie, 
"Which I so much doe vaunt, yet no where show ; 
But vouch antiquities which no body can know. 

— Spenser's Faery Queen, 




^fP<r^&M 




III 

THK STORY OF THE OI.D DUTCH CHURCH 

THE story of the old Dutch church is one 
which the sensitive historian commences 
with caution and misgiving, since an antiquity 
of only two centuries has already hidden the 
end of its perspective in a mist through which 
nothing very definite can be seen ; but as men 
are more apt to do battle for their opinions 
than for the matters that they know beyond 
peradventure, it is impossible to hazard a con- 
jecture upon the date of the erection of the 
church without being halted and belabored by 
the clubs of a score of antiquaries. 

Near Flypse's castle, hard by the millpond, 
between the Pocantico and the graveyard, 
Vredryk Flypse and one, or both, of his wives 
built a sturdy stone church with gambrel roof 
and an octagonal rear. Surmounting the front a 

39 



40 Cbronlcles ot ^arrgtown 

belfry, quaintly misfitting the structure below 
it, pointed its dumpy spire heavenward with a 
sturdy consistency that was as uncompromis- 
ingly Hollandish as the sermons that the 
Dominie droned from the bell-flower pulpit to 
the drowsy farmers of Philipsburg. 

When the church was new there were seven 
windows where there are now but six, and a 
door on the south side instead of at the west, 
as at present. The walls were thirty inches 
in thickness, and the sills of the windows more 
than seven feet above the floor, so that the 
savage foemen who lurked in the woods could 
not look in upon the little congregation. Iron 
bars traversing these openings gave still greater 
security to the building which could in time of 
danger have been converted into a fortress, im- 
pregnable against any weapons or engine that 
the Indians could produce. Between the door 
and the middle south window, outside, a bench 
used to stand, and there the old folks rested 
while waiting for the dominie's appearance; for 
it was long a custom to follow the black gown 
into church as a flock of sheep follow the 
bellwether. 



anD Sleeps fbollow 41 

The interior of the church showed evidence 
of taste and skill; but its furniture testified 
without equivocation to the recognition of class 
distinctions even under the shadow of the pul- 
pit. The dominie, from that ornate octagonal 
perch, with the pendant hexagon of mahogany 
that hung over him like an extinguisher, giv- 
ing emphasis to his sonorous periods, ex- 
pounded the word of God as endorsed and 
interpreted by the Synod of Dortrecht. Before 
him sat a congregation of solidly constructed 
Dutchmen, whose anatomy could stand the 
strain of a long service while seated on back- 
less benches of unyielding oak. The farmer 
who tilled his acres or cut his wood lot in 
Sleepy Hollow was not carried to the skies on 
beds of flowery ease, by an}'- means ; but his 
lord, who, in the divine ordination of degrees, 
had been made to enjoy all the softer delights 
of life, was edified while reposing in a cush- 
ioned and canopied * ' throne. ' ' Such luxurious 
boxes, somewhat resembling those of a modern 
theatre, were arranged for the lord of the 
manor and his family at the minister's right 
and left. 



42 Cbronlcles ot ^arrgtown 

The humble retainers, slaves, and redemp- 
tioners, sat in the gallery with the boys and 
the singers, and a precentor to keep them all 
in order. From the top of the walls great oak 
beams crossed the church, and above these ex- 
tended an arched ceiling of whitewashed oak, 
from the west end of which the lower part of 
the belfry intruded like a great white box set 
against the wall. The belfry-box had a ladder 
leading to it from the galler}^ and a round 
window from which the bellringer could see 
when the dominie was in the pulpit. 

Nowhere was the local color of Philipsburg 
more strongly brought out than at the church. 
The character of the peaceful community of 
Philipsburg must have been for a while some- 
thing between Acadia and Eden, with a dash 
of Holland to flavor it. The people gathered 
about their head for council and for protection 
as in some earlier patriarchal government, but 
there was no overstepping the bounds of caste ; 
men had not yet begun to be born free and 
equal. But something more nearly approach- 
ing equality obtained on the Sabbath day at 
the church. Doubtless there were great and 



an& Sleeps Ibollow 43 

influential sinners, and miserable sinners, even 
as there are big fish and little fish, and the sal- 
vation of the proprietor was a very different 
matter from the salvation of a tenant; but still, 
when they were all gathered at the manor 
church on a Sunda}^ while Dominie Ritzema, 
or Dominie Mutzelius, dealt faithfully with their 
souls, there must have been at least the semb- 
lance of a fellow-feeling. 

There came Flypse with his family and 
guests, gorgeously arrayed in purple and fine 
linen. The women wore splendid stomachers, 
laced and pearl trimmed, with short gowns of 
rich brocade or stiff silk, quilted and padded, 
and cut short to show the neat ankles in their 
red, clocked stockings. The men flourished in 
long-skirted blue coats, with buttons of silver 
and gold, over silken small-clothes and hose. 
Their tie wigs, and their buckles, showed that 
neither head nor feet were considered beyond 
the pale of adornment. The children were 
miniature parodies on their elders ; and the 
dominie, who belonged to the upper ten, ap- 
peared in his suit of respectable black. Next 
were the farmers, dressed in home-spun, linsey- 



44 Cbconiclea ot TTarrgtown 

woolsey, and all manner of durable stuffs, the 
girls trying humbly to imitate the splendors of 
the great dames. After the farmer folk came 
the negro slaves and the poorer white hangers- 
on of the place and the few aboriginal land- 
holders who lingered as paupers where their 
sires had lorded it once. 

A well-known character of those days was 
old Wolfert Kcker, who was the builder and 
proprietor of the '' Wolfert' s Roost," which 
Washington Irving has made familiar to all 
the world, as Sunnyside. Wolfert Bcker was a 
man to be trusted both by his neighbors and 
his landlord, and his name appears third on 
the list of elders of the church. He was 
elected to that office in 1698, a year before the 
building was completed, if we are to take the 
word of several clerical authorities. 

With this mention of Bcker and the date of 
his election the unhappy historian brings the 
hornets about his head, for the antiquary who 
believes that 1699 was the true date of erection^ 
as placarded on the front of the church, is im- 
mediately up in arms against his brother- 
antiquary who holds that the Wolfert Bcker 



anD Sleepy •fcoUow 4S 

election in 1698 <:asts a doubt upon it. I may 
as well, having made this plunge, do a little 
splashing in these vexed waters. First, the 
date on the tablet in the front or west wall of 
the church states that the building was erected 
in 1699 by Frederick Philips and Katrina Van 
Courtlandt. This statement, which, so far as 
I can discover, is entirely unsupported by a 
shadow of other testimony, is inscribed in Eng- 
lish, a language not used in the church till 
some time subsequent to the war for Independ- 
ence. The character of the letters is one com- 
paratively recent, and there is every probability 
that the tablet was put up at the time of the 
repairs in 1837; that is to say, nearly a century 
and a half after the church was built. Cer- 
tainly this tablet does not afford very strong or 
convincing evidence. 

On the other hand, the date on the bell is 
1685. This bell was not one which would be 
likely to be picked up in stock in a foundry or 
a store. It is of fine workmanship, and is 
ornamented with a pattern in relief and the 
raised motto, ^^Sz Deus pro nobis quis contra 
nos. ' ' In the will of Katrina, the second wife 



46 Cbronicle6 of ^arr^town 

of lyord Filipse, that good lady refers to * ' The 
church which my husband, the late Lord, etc., 
built." 

The first minister of whom we have record 
was called to the Dutch Church of Philipsburg 
in 1697 ; this is, of course, suggestive. But 
perhaps one of the strongest arguments that 
can be offered by those whose happiness de- 
pends upon adding a few years to the antiquity 
of this church is found in the character of the 
people. Though not fanatical, the Dutchmen 
were great church-goers, and it seems improb- 
able that the rich proprietor, surrounded by 
a rapidly growing tenantry, having built for 
himself a house which won the denomination 
of ' ' Castle, ' ' and a mill that has survived even 
the inattention of its owners for two centuries, 
should have waited fifteen years or more be- 
fore building a church. There is no reason to 
suppose that any great delay was made in 
building it, except an incongruous tablet 
erected about 1837 by some people who about 
the same time proved their stupidity by turn- 
ing the rare old inlaid black-oak communion- 
table out of the church and afterwards selling 



anD SleePB Ibollow 47 

it to Judge Constant for twenty-five dollars. 
By the way, this table, which, with the silver 
communion-service and baptismal-bowl, were 
the gift to the church of the fijrst lord of the 
manor and his last wife, are now in use in the 
First Reformed Church, which is the daughter 
of the old Dutch church. The table was re- 
turned to the church, and now bears a silver 
plate with an inscription stating that it was the 
gift of James K. Paulding. 

Beyond the Rev. William Bertholf, first 
stated minister of God's Word in the manor of 
Phihpsburg, there is a mist, if not of antiquity, 
at least of real ignorance. If any one preached 
to' this people, married them, christened their 
babies and buried their dead (and we suppose 
that someone must have done some of these 
things which even savages do not fail entirely 
to celebrate), neither history nor tradition has 
made a note of it. 

In the year 1697, according to the records 
begun by Abraham de Revere in 17 15, an in- 
vitation was given to, and accepted by, ' ' the 
very learned and pious Guillaume Bertholf, 
minister at Hackensack and Hagquackenon, 



48 Cbronicles ot Carrgtown 

to preach for them and administer the sacra- 
ments three or four times in the year ; and 
the continuance of these ordinances until the 
2d of November, 1715 ; also the payment 
of the minister for these services ; and of 
Mr. Van Houten, who carried him on those 
long journeys from and to his home in 
Hakinsack." 

Mr. Bertholf was an American by birth, 
who had been educated for the ministry in 
Holland and returned to his native land to 
labor in what would now be considered a 
home missionary field. His successor was 
Frederick Mutzelius. 

Johannes Ritzema was the next preacher. It 
is not known at what date he commenced to 
minister to the people. He was a man of ex- 
ceptional ability, it is said, having been hon- 
ored with positions of trust in the church. 
Educated in Holland, he labored in New York 
City from 1744 to 1784. In 1755, he was pastor 
of Harlem, PhiHpsburg, Fordham, and Court- 
landt. He continued to fill the pulpit of the 
old church, at how frequent intervals we do not 
know, till the Revolution. In 17 17, the con- 



anD Sleeps Ibollow 49 

gregations of Co'urtlandt and Philipsburg had 
united to support the reHgious services in the 
latter place. 

With the new era after the Revolution came 
the Rev. Stephen Van Voorhees, who was 
identified with the new movement by which 
the Dutch Church in America finally separated 
itself from its parent in Holland. Mr. Van 
Voorhees was the first candidate licensed by 
the independent American Synod in 1772. 
During the struggle for independence the 
church at Tarrytown had been frequently, if 
not entirely, closed. The weddings waited, and 
the babies were unbaptized, and the converts 
un welcomed ; this we gather from the records. 
After that memorable struggle the little hand- 
ful who survived resumed their church-going 
habits and began by renovating the house, 
which had fallen somewhat in need of repair. 
In the first enthusiasm of victorious republi- 
canism they attacked the ' ' Thrones ' ' of the 
lyord and lyady of Philipsburg, and tore down 
the hangings of silk and the luxurious seats, 
substituting boxes for the elders and deacons. 

^' No more lyords and Kings," they cried. 

4 



50 Cbronicles ot ^arrigtown 

But under this rampant radicalism still slum- 
bered Dutch conservatism. They had reached 
the limit of innovation when they established 
backs for benches that had hitherto been back- 
less ; comfortless oak boards supported on 
stanchions so placed that it only needed a 
heavy weight at the end to convert one into a 
perilous ballista. Reform had gone as far as 
decency permitted ; any one who should pro- 
pose more was a dangerous radical. 

The offender was the Rev. Stephen Van 
Voorhees. After they had secured his services, 
the worshippers in the old church began to 
suspect that he was liable to explode, and they 
watched him jealously. He was a new-party 
man and they belonged — the more they thought 
it over the more they were sure they belonged 
— to the old party. Revolutions would do well 
enough in State, but in Church they would 
have none of them. 

Now, let us picture a scene in the year 1785 
or 1786. On the benches under the church 
windows the old cronies sit and gossip in the 
sun. A group of hardy men — men who have 
had experiences ranging from the Sugar House 



aiiD Sleeps Ibollow 51 

to Yorktown — loiter near the door, where a 
retinue of small boys mimic their attitudes in 
worshipful silence and gravity, cocking one 
foot over the other and expectorating mightily, 
while they listen to what these great men 
have to say, belonging, as they do, to the 
original guild of hero- worshippers. Along 
the road come young men and maidens, with- 
out prudery or affectation, carrying their Sun- 
day shoes in their hands. They stop at the 
Pocantico and, having washed their dusty feet 
and put on their shoes, ascend the bank pain- 
fully to join their elders. 

Finally the dominie appears and saluting 
gravely to right and left, he leads the way into 
the church ; the congregation, \^ith much ru.st- 
ling and squeaking and stumbling in the unac- 
customed shoes, are settled in their accustomed 
places. The choir has scrambled up the gal- 
lery stairs and the service begins. Several of 
the people, mothers in Israel especialh^, turn 
their heads towards the door now and then to 
scrutinize a little group of late comers. There 
is Solomon Hawes with lyovine Hammon, his 
wife (she is of the family of General James 



52 Cbconiclcs ot ^airstown 

Hammon, or Hammond), and their infant, 
with one or two others. 

After the prayer the dominie breaks an ex- 
pectant hush with the customary formula, invit- 
ing those parents who have children to be 
baptized to present them and Solomon Hawes 
and his little family gather about the altar. 
Heretofore, there has been nothing strange, but 
as the clergyman takes the infant out of her 
father's arms and proceeds, ** Lovinia, I bap- 
tise thee," etc., a thrill of something deeper 
than surprise goes over the congregation. 

St. Nicholas defend us, and the States Gen- 
eral of Holland and the Synod of Dortrecht and 
all other things Dutch defend us. He is bap- 
tizing little Lovine Hawes in Eiiglish. 

The offense was one which the people did 
not easily forgive. The first plunge is usually 
remembered, and, although English gradually 
superseded Dutch in the services of the Church, 
Mr. Van Voorhees was not popular in Philips- 
burg. He also began to keep the church 
records in English, thus turning the weapon 
in the wound. His term was short. 

Mr. Van Voorhees lived on the north side 



anO Sleeps Ibollow 53 

of Main Street at its intersection with Broad- 
way. 

Following Mr. Van Voorhees came Rev. 
John F. Jackson, who preached at Tarrytown 
and Harlem, beginning in the fall of 1791 and 
continuing till 1806. He died pastor at Ford- 
ham thirty years later. Rev. Thomas G. 
Smith followed. He was a man of strong 
physique and strong mind, celebrated as a 
martyr and a prophet, because of a scandal 
which arose during his term at Greenburg. 
From 181 2 till 1820 he had kept this church full 
to overflowing, and his popularity seemed to be 
great till, in the latter year, he was arrested on 
a charge preferred maliciously by some of his 
people. Having been tried and acquitted, he 
returned to the church to preach his last dis- 
course, using as a text the words, " Your 
house shall be left unto you desolate." With- 
in a very few years the congregation had 
dwindled to nothing, and the house was closed. 

Of all the dominies Mr. Smith seems to have 
afforded the largest fund of anecdote to the 
antiquary. His eloquence and geniality made 
him popular even while his eccentric habits ex- 



54 Cbroniclee ot ZTarr^town 

posed him to criticism. With a carelessness 
that amounted to slovenliness in his personal 
habits, he exhibited a degree of energy and 
zeal in his professional work that silenced his 
critics. Mr. Smith organized the church at 
Unionville; built up the church at White 
Plains largely by his own efforts; preached in 
private houses at Dobbs Ferry till a public 
house of worship was erected there; and drew 
hearers for miles around when he filled the 
pulpit at Philipsburg. 

Tradition does not leave us in doubt as to 
the figure that he cut in that pulpit, v/hen, 
having regaled himself from his ample mull at 
the end of the hymn before the sermon he 
trumpeted vigorously throughout the collec- 
tion and rose to his discourse with the unmo- 
lested snuff in driblets staining the front of his 
not otherwise immaculate waistcoat. 

But when he preached, as his eloquence 
began to thrill his hearers, his own personality 
seemed to change, and those who listened to 
him could not remember that he was ' ' slovenly 
in dress and careless in manners. ' ' 

It sometimes happens that at harvest time, 



anD Sleepg Ibollow 55 

when a farmer congregation is worked to the 
limit of its ph^^sical endurance, its members 
find it impossible to keep their eyes open at 
church for the length of a sermon, though it 
should happen to be delivered with all the elo- 
quence of a Beecher or a Smith. An anecdote, 
sometimes related of other ministers, but origi- 
nal, I believe, with Dominie Smith, is to the 
efiect that upon one such occasion of general 
somnolence he startled his sleeping flock bj^ a 
cry of " Fire ! Fire ! " There was instant con- 
sternation in the church. Women screamed 
and men scrambled to their feet. 

* ' Where ? where ? ' ' was the excited outcry. 
The dominie regarded his awakened people 
sternly for a moment, and then with the mien 
and accent of delegated authority he thun- 
dered : 

* * In hell ! for such sleepy Christians as you 
are." 

lycss was thought at that day of excess in 
the use of alcoholic stimulants than now, yet 
there has been no whisper of undue indulgence 
on the part of the popular, careless, convivial 
pastor, though when a parishioner paid his re- 



56 Cbronlcles of ^arrgtown 

spects at the manse, the bottle of Jamaica rum 
was always forthcoming. It is thought that 
the dominie's wife might have driven a man 
of less pliant temper to drink ; for if ever a 
Xantippe lived in these latter centuries to 
harass a philosophical husband, Dame Smith 
was that woman. On one occasion, having 
some difference of opinion either with her care- 
less lord or his elders, it does not appear 
which, she locked him securely in his study 
before church and left it to the distressed con- 
sistory to discover and liberate him long after 
the hour for the commencement of the ser- 
vices. Another prank of peculiarly feminine 
ingenuity consisted in bringing a pillow to 
church and ostentatiously settling herself for 
a nap during the sermon. A peculiarly scan- 
dalous exhibition of emotional insanity or gen- 
eral cussedness, or whatever it was that ailed 
her, was in driving the minister's horse at 
breakneck speed up and down in front of the 
church while the worshippers within were no 
doubt casting sidelong glances through the 
door, and wondering whether the quiver of 
lightnings was empty. 



anO Sleepy Ibollow 57 

As we remember these things we begin to 
forgive the dominie his use of tobacco in every 
form, and his careless personal attire, his 
frayed wristbands and rumpled stock and soiled 
waistcoat. We plead extenuating circumstan- 
ces when his general slouchiness is mentioned. 
Perhaps Brummel would have been a slouch if 
he had been wedded to Xantippe. 

Dominie Smith's body lies at the rear of the 
church where he labored, and the people who 
laid him there remembered only that he was 
their faithful and much loved pastor. 

When the Rev. George Du Bois came to 
Tarrytown it was to gain rest after eighteen 
years of sermon-writing and pastoral work in 
a city parish. He officiated at the old Frank- 
Hn Street Church in New York City. The 
call to the Reformed Dutch Church of Tarry- 
town was accompanied with a promise that a 
new church edifice should be built. In 1837- 
38 $2032.86 was paid for repairs on the old 
church, and between $6000 and $7000 ex- 
pended upon the South Church and parsonage. 
Mr. William Landrine was one of the promi- 
nent parishioners at that time, and by his per- 



58 Cbronicles ot ITarri^town 

sonal efforts raised $761.75 out of the $2032.86 
required for repairing the old church. Mr. 
Smith had received but $300 per annum for his 
services. This salary was raised to $700 for 
Mr. Du Bois, whose labors included a service 
in the old church in the morning and in the 
South Church in the evening. At this time 
the Sunday-school of the old church used to 
meet comfortably in the gallery. In 1844, Mr. 
Du Bois followed his predecessor, and was 
buried in the old churchyard. 

In 1845, Joseph Wilson came and filled the 
joint pulpits till 1849, when he was succeeded 
by John Mason Ferris, who, in three or four 
months after settlement, refused to preach at 
all in the old church, and confined his minis- 
trations to the South Church. This move ne- 
cessitated the employment of an assistant, at 
an expense partly met by Mr. Ferris, and for 
a year the Rev. John W. Schenck filled that 
position, but was never installed. 

With the division of the church into two 
congregations, worshipping in separate build- 
ings, for that was necessarily the outcome of 
the erection of the South Church, there came 



anO Sleeps Ibollow 59 

in a short time a complete separation of inter- 
ests which led to divorce. The division of 
church property followed. The North Church, 
or old organization, retained the old building, 
graveyard, name, seal, records, and plate; and 
the South Church assumed a debt of $1000 and 
gave to the North Church $2000. All other 
realty was released to the South Church. 
Church Street, south of the Benedict property, 
owes its name to having been built upon a por- 
tion of this estate. 

It was to the pastorate of over sixty families 
and one hundred and fifty members that re- 
mained to the old church after the division 
that the Rev. Abel T. Stewart was called in 
1852. It w^as during his ministry that the re- 
moval was made by the congregation from the 
old building to the " new " one it at present 
occupies. 

But before Mr. Stewart came the Rev. Wil- 
liam Brush was called. According to the 
chronicler, ' ' He came, saw the state of things, 
and in three months resigned without being 
installed." 

A man of more than ordinary strength was 



6o Cbronicles of tTarrgtowu 

the Rev. Abel T. Stewart ; the last preacher at 
the Old Dutch Church. Of his clerical labors 
I shall not speak here, except to say that he 
was an earnest if not pre-eminently an eloquent 
preacher. To the man, outside of his pulpit, 
a tribute of admiration may justly be paid. 
Those who only knew him casually — the later 
comers to the town — remember a somewhat 
serious divine, whose courage, impetuosity, 
and natural humor were repressed by his sense 
of what was due to his sacred calling ; but the 
men who grew up under his care, the members 
of his Sabbath-school at an earlier day, recall 
incidents that show him to have been an ex- 
ample of what modern slang calls ' * muscular 
Christianity. ' ' 

He was an enthusiastic follower of Isaac 
Walton's gentle craft, angling for trout in the 
Gebney brook and the Carl brook and down 
the Pocantico at a day when Salnio Fontinalis 
was not a rarity in the neighboring streams. 
Mr. Amada Bryant is one of those who recol- 
lect how the " domine " used to get the cream 
of the spring angling, appearing frequently 
with a full creel when some of his less fortunate 



anD Slecpg Ibollow 6i 

parishioners were laboriously whipping the 
stream over which he had gone. No matter 
how early in the morning one started, he was 
apt to prove himself, for that occasion, as un- 
lucky a fisherman as Simon Peter, if it chanced 
that Mr. Stewart had selected the same day and 
the same stream for his fishing. 

Members of Mr. Stewart's Bible-class have 
told how the athletic pastor excelled in j ump- 
ing, running, and throwing quoits. A famous 
jump, by which he cleared the body of a farm 
wagon, in a line over the high rear wheels, was 
long the admiration of the youth of the neigh- 
borhood. Well-knit, tall, and muscular, he 
was the ideal of an athlete in his younger days, 
recalling vividly Ivowell's line : 

'* He was six foot of man, A i, clean grit and human 
natur'." 

On one occasion when the Sunday-school 
children were proceeding on foot along the 
railroad track to a place selected for the an- 
nual picnic, the entire company, scholars and 
teachers alike, were panic-stricken at the near 
approach of a train. The road was then a 



62 Cbronicles of ^arrgtown 

single track, and at that point occupied the 
crest of an embankment, on each side of which 
the ground sloped precipitously. The one per- 
son who did not lose his head was the minister. 
Putting his long, athletic legs and arms in 
motion, he rushed like an animated windmill 
through that little crowd of j uvenile humanity 
and cleared the track effectually, rolling his 
charges right and left down the slope. I give 
this story as I got it from several reputable 
witnesses, though I confess I never could quite 
understand how he did it. 

There was an incident in Abel T. Stewart's 
life which entitles him to be ranked among the 
heroes. When, during the troublous times of 
the Civil War, the terrible outbreak which we 
speak of with a shudder as " the '63 riots," 
taxed the strength of New York's defenders to 
the utmost, a band of several hundred rioters 
was reported to be on the road to Tarry town. 
There was consternation in every home. 
Word came from unquestioned sources that 
the torch was to be applied to Tarry town, and 
men armed themselves and secured the de- 
fences to their houses as well as they were 



anD Sleepy Ibollow 63 

able to do. Over the hills a long line of 
negroes fled to the woods to escape a threat- 
ened massacre. I am not now speaking from 
hearsay. I saw this. 

The rioters were within a short distance of 
the town, and no man in the community dared 
put himself in their way till Abel T. Stewart, 
minister of God's Word, accompanied by one 
faithful companion, Captain Oscar Jones, a 
soldier home on furlough, marched out with 
splendid audacity to meet them. There were, 
indeed, several citizens who would have gone 
but were providentially detained by appoint- 
ments and other devices of a faint heart, long 
before the enemy came in sight. Mr. Stewart 
and his one companion did not dream of turn- 
ing back. The chances were overwhelmingly 
against them ; neither they nor any of their 
townspeople could have reasonably expected 
that they would return alive ; and yet the man 
of peace and the soldier just returned from the 
front went on their way as quietly as they 
would have gone to church. Nowhere is there 
a record of a braver forlorn hope. 

Mr. Stewart met the rioters and reasoned 



64 Cbroniclcs of Q^arr^town 

with them. He told them that their reception 
would be warm ; that a gunboat, which had 
just arrived in the river, would shell the houses 
of their sympathizers without mercy if they 
persisted ; he used cogent reasoning, convinc- 
ing even to such a bloodthirsty mob of anarch- 
ists; and in the end he succeeded in turning 
them back. Then he went quietly home and 
began to write his sermon or do whatever duty 
lay nearest. 

You imagine no doubt that the people at 
least thanked this man who had offered his life 
as a buffer between them and mob violence ? 
No. They discovered, from the narrative of 
his companion, that Mr. Stewart, in addressing 
the rioters, had called them, " My friends," 
and their indignation ran so high (remember 
the partisan prejudice of war times and try to 
forgive them) that they could see no bravery 
nor goodness in this man. He was a Demo- 
crat ; as such doubtless a secessionist, and 
therefore, of course, a friend of the rioters : 
ergo, there was no possible danger to him in 
facing them. 

The world is full of people who have missed 



atiD Bleeps Ibollow 65 

their opportunities ; a class of people whose 
number was greatly added to when the popula- 
tion of Tarrytown neglected to recognize and 
to honor A. T. Stewart, whose story, I think, 
has never before been told in print. There is 
only a line to add. Partisan animosity and 
misunderstanding were so strong that the use- 
fulness of the minister of the First Reformed 
Church was greatly curtailed, and at last it 
seemed wiser for him to vSeek new fields of use- 
fulness, and to labor in some town that he had 
never saved. 

With the close of Mr. Stewart's ministry in 
1866, properly closes the history of the Old 
Dutch Church as a place of worship. Though 
it is opened on Sunday afternoons in summer 
for service, and many eloquent men have 
spoken from its quaint pulpit, yet its value is 
rather as a relic than a house of worship to- 
day. The effort which is at present being 
made to repair and preserve it is the result of 

a strong and worthy popular sentiment. 
s 




IV 



SUNNYSID^ 



THE home of Wolfert Ecker, one of the 
early officers of the Old Dutch Church, 
has been celebrated under the title of Wolfert' s 
Roost. At the time of the Revolution its 
tenant was Jacob Van Tassel, the hero of 
the " goose gun," whose well-known patriot- 
ism attracted m.en of the same stripe from Tar- 
rytown, Sleepy Hollow, and Petticoat Lane ; 
so that his house became a rallying point for 
half the hot-headed youth of the country side. 

The property, held before the war as part of 
the manorial right of the Philipse estate by the 
tenant, was conveyed afterwards to Van Tas- 
sel under the act of forfeiture. 

In March, 1802, Jacob Van Tassel sold the 
property to Oliver Ferris, whose grandson, 
Benson Ferris, is the President of the Westches- 

66 



Cbronlcles of ZTarv^town 67 

ter County Savings Bank. Benson Ferris the 
first, the father of the present bearer of the name, 
married a lineal descendant of Wolffert Ecker. 

In Washington Irving' s youth, while a 
guest at the Paulding house, (now destroyed), 
he frequently rowed a boat to the willows that 
overhung the little brook that runs through 
the Sunnyside glen, and read or dreamed away 
long summer afternoons in the shade of its 
elms. A deep satisfaction with a spot that 
seemed so thoroughly in accord with his own 
gentle, retiring, and contemplative disposition, 
gained so firm a hold upon the imagination of 
the future author, that in all his wanderings 
through England and the Continent of Europe, 
he never forgot the little house with its sun- 
flecked lawn reaching down to the river; nor 
the quality of its beauty. 

In 1835, finding himself again in America 
and somewhat improved in worldly fortune, 
Mr. Irving visited the familiar place and pur- 
chased it. At that time he told Mrs. Ferris 
that he had resolved, years before, that if he 
ever owned a piece of ground that he could call 
home, it would be there. It is pleasant to 



68 Qbtonic\c6 of tiarrstowu 

think that the welcome guest in London and 
Paris, the courtly minister in Madrid, always 
cherished in his heart the picture of a little bit 
of his own land ; and that after years of exile 
he could enjoy the fulfilment of his dream. 

The rebuilding of Sunnyside, as he named 
the house, and the elaboration of quaint con- 
ceits in its architecture and adornment, afforded 
Mr. Irving some of the happiest hours of his 
life. From the simple and rather featureless 
American cottage of that day the building 
was developed into a very Dutch country-seat, 
unique among the many charming homes on 
the river banks. It remains in the possession 
of a member of the Irving family. 

Washington Irving' s social life in the neigh- 
borhood he had chosen was ideally delightful 
to a man of his temperament. The quiet 
round of country pleasures, long rambles, rides 
to the village or to a neighbor's, explorations 
and discoveries in Sleepy Hollow, and long ex- 
citing quests after a character or a legend, were 
alternated with congenial social intercourse, 
and seasons of studious labor in his comfort- 
able library. 



anD Sleep)? Ibollow 69 

Mr. Irving' s life in Tarry town was that of a 
citizen who took pleasure in identifying him- 
self with the interests of his neighborhood. In 
Christ Church, which he attended regularly, 
he was a warden. His simple, unaffected cour- 
tesy made him a welcome guest, not only in 
the parlors of wealthy and influential people, 
but in the homes of many of his humbler neigh- 
bors. It pleased him to stop for a chat at this 
or that door-yard gate; and not a child could 
pass without his kindly notice. The influence 
which has spread like a charm from Sunnj^side 
has been that of its master's personality more 
than of his genius. 

Among a coterie of cultivated people who 
enjoyed the gentle humorist's friendship was 
General James Watson Webb, the editor of the 
Courier and Enquirer, who lived at Pokahoe, 
an estate on Broadway north of the village. 
This place was afterwards the home of the 
" Pathfinder," General Fremont, and is now 
owned by Mrs. Monroe. The late Mr. George 
D. Morgan was one of Mr. Irving' s intimates, 
and was present at his death. Another of 
those who enjoyed his friendship was his near 



70 Cbronfcles ot H^arri^town 

neighbor, Mr. Edward S. Jaffray, between 
whose household and that of Sunnyside de- 
lightfully cordial relations existed. Hon. 
Moses H. Grinnell, who married Mr. Irving' s 
niece ; James H. Banker; William Hoge and 
Henry Holdredge were also among the well- 
known men who were in almost daily associa- 
tion with the master of Sunnyside. 

It was at this quaint Dutch cottage that the 
Life of Washington was written ; here Louis 
Napoleon, afterwards Kmperor of France, 
called to pay his respects; and here the fine, 
sweet spirit of Irving passed on November 28, 

1859. 

The ivy which overruns Sunnyside is as 
green as the fame and memory of Irving. He 
brought it from Melrose in Scotland, and 
planted it by the wall of his home by the 
Hudson. 




N 



THK NEUTRAL GROUND 

O part of the country was so harried, ' ' 
says Irving, ' * by friend and foe alike, ' ' 
as this neighborhood. When the war for Inde- 
ependence was declared, a dozen families where 
the village of Tarrj^town now is, and perhaps 
as man}^ more scattered through Sleepy Hollow 
and over towards the Sawmill River, comprised 
all that we can reckon of the population. The 
majority of the men were farmers, who knew 
how to handle a gun, who could stalk a deer, 
or encounter a bear with skill and courage. 
Such people, abandoned by the necessities of 
war to the tender mercies of marauders and 
stock thieves, were not long in devising wa3^s 
to defend themselves. A sort of home guard, 
in which it is said that women as well as men 
did duty, was organized to picket the highway, 

71 



72 Cbronicles of a:arr^town 

and check the raids of cowboys and skinners. 
Some joined the band which, under the leader- 
ship of Van Courtlandt, at Croton, patrolled 
the river in whale-boats, and were a serious 
source of annoyance to the British men-of-war 
and transports. 

Depleted granaries and empty smoke-houses 
brought the people often to the verge of starva- 
tion, and they deteriorated from a prosperous 
little community, in which, while no one ex- 
cept the manor-lord was very rich, neither was 
any one very poor, to a wretched handful of 
hungry outcasts, holding their inch of ground 
by force of cunning and skill. During the 
years of the war the church was empty and 
unopened for service ; the faint tinkle of its 
bell never called the congregation to worship. 
There was no school open, and the boy who 
was growing up in those years of conflict knew 
more of hare-brained adventures and hair- 
breadth escapes than of figures ; while the only 
part of speech in which he became proficient 
was the adjective, caught in its redundant 
variety from the passing trooper. 

With the closing of the church and the ab- 



anD Sleepy IboUow 73 

sence of any minister, such familiar rites as 
baptism, marriage, and burial were attended to 
not at all, or, at best, in a lame, lay fashion. 
The infants bom during the war were pre- 
sented for baptism at a convenient season after 
the restoration of peace ; but whether the same 
facilities were extended to marriage nobody 
now knows. 

The last lord of the manor had ' ' retired ' ' 
from his estates, which were afterwards con- 
fiscated b}' the Government and sold or granted 
to other aspirants. There seems to have been 
some sort of occupation of the old house dur- 
ing part of the war time at least, for there are 
those now living who can remember hearing 
* * Grandma ' ' Beekman tell how she once lay 
sleepless in one of its rooms, and heard all night 
the rumble of the artillery and the tramp of 
men and of horses when Washington passed 
this way to unite with the Frenchmen in an 
advance upon New York. On this memorable 
occasion, according to General Washington's 
diary, he halted for rest at the Old Dutch 
Church, which is opposite the manor-house 
grounds. 



74 Cbronfcles of tXarri^town 

Many of the young men joined themselves 
to the American side, and suffered wounds and 
death for the cause of Uberty. Several knew 
the inside of the fatal prison -ships, where men 
went mad from starvation and filth and con- 
finement ; and death was the only merciful at- 
tendant. 

There was not much law or order. Such as 
there was was of a military stamp. Colonel 
Hammon — or Hammond — was a leading spirit, 
organizing and executing with half the roy- 
stering blades of the countryside at his back. 

Van Tassels, Van Warts, Sees, Requas, 
Martlings, Couenhovens, Deans, and others 
whose descendants are still living in the neigh- 
borhood, became locally celebrated, during the 
dark days of the war, for personal courage. 
Indeed, if the statement made b}^ Bolton and 
others is nearly accurate, that there were about 
a dozen houses in Tarrytown at the close of 
the war for Independence, then we must won- 
der that so small a settlement could produce so 
large a number of heroes. 

To give some clear idea of the activity of 
this very little hamlet, which seemed to swarm 



atiD Sleeps Ibollow 75 

iike a hornet's nest whenever molested by an 
invader, a chronological list of the leading 
events which occurred here between 1776 and 
1782 has been prepared. It will be noticed 
that the rdles enacted upon this little stage 
were usually filled b}^ local talent. 

On Saturday, July 13, 1776, George Comb, 
Joseph Young, James Hammond, and others, 
constituting the Committee of Safety at White 
Plains, sent a letter to General Washington, 
informing him that frigates belonging to the 
British had, with several tenders, arrived at 
Tarry town. The report added that powder 
and ball had been sent to that place, and allu- 
sion was made to public stores there. The 
war-ships, Phoenix and Rose, were in the Tap- 
pan Zee, we learn from other authority, on the 
14th and 15th of July, and General Hammond 
wrote a letter announcing their departure on 
the 26th. Bolton cites the original letters. 
Washington Irving, in his Life of Washington, 
states that Pierre Van Courtlandt organized 
his famous River Guards and sent them out 
that year. The loyalty and activity of the 
yeomen of the neighborhood made them valu- 



76 Cbronicle0 of tTarcgtown 

able recruits, and their knowledge of the vari- 
ous hiding-places along the shore, in the bays 
and coves, enabled them to be peculiarly har- 
assing to the British. The men, untrained to 
war, soon found as much delight in banging at 
the enemy's frigates as they had previously 
enjoyed in winging duck or bagging pigeons. 
Their flotilla consisted of whale boats that 
found snug hiding in the ' ' Hafenje ' ' or the 
'^ Slapering Hafeny A patrol, which tradi- 
tion says was composed of all brave people, no 
distinctions of sex or color, kept the roads, 
and the coming of the enemy's fleet was her- 
alded by beacon-fires that blazed from Kaakiat, 
and were reflected along the crests of the 
Greenburg hills. 

There was a convention held at White Plains 
in July, 1776. During that month and the suc- 
ceeding one. General Putnam tried to obstruct 
the Hudson where it is narrower, below the 
Tappan Zee, by sinking vessels there, and plac- 
ing chains and chevaux de /rise to prevent the 
escape of the war-ships that had gone up the 
Hudson. On the i8th of August, fire-ships as- 
cended the river for the purpose of destroying 



anD Sleeve Ibollow 77 

the enemy's vessels in the Tappan Zee. They 
were partly successful, as they burned one of 
the tenders and frightened away the ships. In 
Irving' s Life of Washington special mention is 
made of this encounter. 

On the 9th of October of the same year, the 
British vessels, Phoenix^ Roebuck, and Tartar 
sailed up the Hudson. When opposite Tarry- 
town, the watchful inhabitants of the place 
sent a post to Peter R. Livingstone, President 
of the Provincial Congress, at Fishkill. 

On the authority of Heath's Memoirs^ we 
learn that in January, 1777, General Washing- 
ton made a movement of the militia and volun- 
teers under General Heath from Peekskill 
towards New York, in order to draw the 
enemy from New Jersey. General Lincoln's 
division, several thousand strong, marched to 
Tarry town on the 14th of January, and en- 
camped here dll the 17th, when they proceeded 
towards Kingsbridge. 

In March, 1777, the British force which was 
unsuccessful in its attack upon Peekskill, upon 
being driven ojff from that village made for 
Tarry town, with the avowed intention of de- 



78 Cbronicles ot ^arrgtovvn 

stroying the stores at Wright's Mill. This 
was possibly the time that the Water Guard, 
having built a lunette, or redoubt, at the foot 
of Church Street (which is the street which 
runs west to the river from Broadway opposite 
Major Hopkins's, formerly Peter Hoe's, place) 
fired upon the Vulture, sloop- of- war, which had 
grounded on ballast reef. 

Doctor Todd, in Scharf s History of Westchest- 
er Coimty, states that in October of that year 
Colonel lyuddington was in command of five 
hundred militia at Tarrytown, when Sir Henry 
Clinton ascended the river with a flotilla of 
transports containing about five thousand 
troops. These landed, and Luddington had 
the temerity to parley with their officer; but 
finding that he stood in imminent danger of 
being surrounded and cut to pieces with his 
little force, he wisely beat a retreat. Putnam's 
account of this matter, written from Peekskill, 
where he was at that time guarding the High- 
lands of the Hudson with a force of iioo Con- 
tinentals and 400 militia, is to the effect that 
Sir Henry Clinton had called in the " Croton 
guides, ' ' and had moved two ships of war and 



an& Sleepy Ibollow 79 

three tenders up the Hudson, and had landed 
their men at Tarry town. 

We learn from General Parson's correspond- 
ence that British refugees under the notorious 
Captain Emmerick surprised the houses of 
Peter and Cornelius Van Tassel on the 17th 
of November, 1777, and burned them to the 
ground, stripping the women and children, and 
leaving them exposed to the inclemency of the 
weather; w^hile the men were carried away 
prisoners, to languish in the old Sugar House 
in New York, or to die in one of the pestilential 
prison-ships, in the Wallabout basin. Bolton 
speaks of the Van Tassels' houses as being near 
" Captain Romer's " house. The destruction 
of the Van Tassels' houses, and the outrages 
accompanying it, were instigated by Governor 
Tryon, at New York, and were well in accord 
with what we read of that cruel and vindictive 
man's character. A further order to destroy 
Tarrytown emanated from the same source, 
and drew forth a strong and indignant letter 
of remonstrance from General Parsons of the 
Continental Army. This letter may be found 
in the Colonial History of New York, 



8o Cbrotilclcs of ^arrgtown 

* * A party of liberty boys, headed by the 
daring and impetuous Martlings, came down 
from the American lines on the 25th of Novem- 
ber, 1777, and burned his [Oliver de lyancey's] 
house at Bloomingdale, by way of revenge, ' ' 
says Mary I<. Booth in her History of New York. 
Bolton, in alluding to the same occurrence, says 
that it was in retaliation for the burning of the 
Van Tassels' homes. There were a number of 
Tarrytown boys in that foray, which was cer- 
tainly as daring and wild as any border- raid that 
Scott has recorded. Probably the clan mus- 
tered — we can imagine them dropping in by 
twos and threes. Van Tassels, Couenhovens, 
Sies, Yerks, Van Weerts, Storms, and all the 
other patriotic youth of the neighborhood — at 
Elizabeth Van Tassel's tavern. Their leader, 
the " impetuous " Martlings, was Abraham, the 
brother of that Isaac who is known as the 
Martyr. Hot with indignation, the brave fel- 
lows pushed on over the twenty miles that lay 
between them and the British lines, and then, 
with admirable recklessness, penetrated those 
lines and applied the torch to the dwelling of 
one of the principal citizens of New York, the 



anD Sleeve IboUow 8i 

brother of the^ lieutenant-governor. There 
were men in Tarrytown, even in those days. 

February, 1780, opened with an attack (on 
the 2d and 3d) upon Young's house in the 
valley of the Neperhan. Young's was famous 
as a yoeman's rendezvous for the sympathizers 
with the Continental cause, and it was a thorn 
in the side of the British, or rather a hornet's 
nest, hung just beyond their outposts, where 
turbulent spirits swarmed and issued only to 
sting. Although Young's was but an ordinary 
dwelling house, yet it was defended in such a 
vigorous and spirited manner that it took six 
companies of infantry, besides cavalry and 
guns, under Colonel Norton, two days to sub- 
due it; and then the garrison were only dis- 
lodged when the house was burned over their 
heads. A great many men were killed in this 
action, and prisoners to the number of ninety 
were taken to the old Sugar House in New 
York. 

That same year saw a sharp skirmish on 
Broadway south of Petticoat Lane ; or, as it is 
now called, the White Plains Road. A com- 
pany of Dnnop's yagers were on their way from 

6 



82 Cbronfclee of ^arrgtcwn 

Kingsbridge to White Plains when they were 
met and defeated by Colonel Richard Butler 
and a company of cavalry under Major Henry 
Lee. 

In Gaines' Weekly Mercury there was pub- 
lished an account, which Bolton quotes, of the 
landing of one thousand one hundred English 
troops at Tarry town, on the 9th of October, 
1778. The British embarked on bateaux at 
Peekskill and proceeded the same night to 
Tarrytown, where, coming ashore at daybreak, 
they occupied the adjoining heights. 

It was in 1779, on the 20th of May, that 
Isaac Martlings, the son of Abraham Mart- 
lings, Sr., and brother of Captain Daniel 
Martlings, was " inhumanely slain," as his 
tombstone states, by Nathaniel Underbill. A 
popular account of this affair based upon Bol- 
ton's story, confounds it with one, and perhaps 
two, other tragedies under the general name of 
the Massacre of Sleepy Hollow. There were 
without question people killed in Sleepy Hol- 
low, and " Polly" Buckhout was, at another 
time and place, shot by mistake because she 
had a man's hat on; but the murder of Mart- 



anD Sleeps Ibollow 83 

lings, " the Martyr," seems to have been dis- 
tinct from these. According to the narrative 
of his great-granddaughter, as published some 
time ago by Mr. M. D. Raymond, Sergeant 
Isaac Martlings was crossing the road to the 
spring, not far from the old Daniel Martlings' 
house (the only one of that ancient group of 
dwellings still standing on Water Street), 
when Underbill set upon him and killed him. 
He was taken into a house near by and the 
murderer escaped. 

The cause of this attack is said by tradition 
to have been an old grudge which Underbill 
held against Martlings, who had tied him by 
his heels to a beam in his own barn and made 
him eat oats out of a measure. It was at a 
time when the people were starving, and Un- 
derbill refused to share with them the grain 
with which his lofts were filled, and which his 
Tory influence had preserved and protected. 
It is further believed that after Martlings was 
slain. Underbill never dared to show his face in 
Tarry town again. 

The foregoing account of Martlings' death 
is gathered from Bolton, Raymond, and other 



84 Cbroniclcs ot ^avri^town 

authorities; from local legends, and from Isaac 
Martlings's tombstone, which is still standing. 

A party of cowboys (date not given) were 
checked in a skirmish with John Dean and 
others near the Couenhoven place, which was 
afterwards Martin Smith's tavern, on the cor- 
ner of Broadway and Main Street. 

The great event of 1780, not only for Tarry- 
town but for the United States (and therefore 
for the world) occurred upon the 23d of Sep- 
tember. On that memorable date, the British 
spy. Major Andre, was captured while on his 
way, in disguise, to New York, with treason- 
able dispatches from Benedict Arnold. Various 
sentimental efforts have been made to palliate 
the conduct of a man who had worked long 
and successfully to corrupt the military virtue 
of one whose reputation had before been un- 
blemished. Not only by his act of entering 
the American lines in secret and trying to 
escape in disguise, while engaged in a business 
which was certainly nefarious, did Andr6 ren- 
der himself liable to the penalty he afterwards 
paid, but he merited it even more, by his pa- 
tient and laborious preparations to effect Ar- 




MONUMENT TO THE CAPTORS OF ANDRE 

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY F. AHRENS 



anD Sleeps "fcollow 85 

nold's treason. His was the guilt of one who 
systematically worked to corrupt another. 

This, however, is not the place for such a dis- 
cussion. Our history has only to do with 
events enacted upon the local stage, and of 
these the capture of Andre was by far the most 
important. His captors, John Paulding, David 
Williams, and Isaac Van Wart, were militia- 
men who were scouting. They had come across 
country from the Eastward the day before, 
stopping over night at a hay-rick near Pleas- 
antville, and crossing by way of Buttermilk 
Hill, on the morning of the 23d, to the Tarry- 
town side. There were, according to Williams's 
narrative, four others in their party. They 
separated at the Davis, or Davids, farm, now^ 
the residence of Mr. James Hawes, whose wife 
is a descendant of the original tenants. 

The trio followed the road for about a mile, 
and then hid in the bushes on the east side of 
present road, on what is now Mr. Eugene 
Jones' s property. Two of the party played cards 
in their concealment, while the other watched 
the highway. In this manner they spent the 
time till a horseman appeared, riding south, and 



86 Cbronicles ot ZTarr^town 

they promptly halted him. Andre, for it was 
he, blundered in the first place, by asking them 
to what party they belonged, and announcing 
himself as of the *' southern," i.e,, the English 
party. The result of this indiscretion was a more 
rigorous search than would, perhaps, otherwise 
have been made, and the eagerness of the captors 
increased with that of the prisoner, who offered 
them his watch, his horse and a large sum of 
money if they would let him go. The same 
class of sentimentalists who have whitewashed 
Andre have belittled his captors, trying to show 
that they were mere bandits. If they had been 
so, no one who reads the historical testimony 
carefully can doubt that Andre would have 
gone on his way to New York a free man, and 
Arnold's treachery would have been successful. 
But John Paulding and his fellows were in- 
corruptible ; their loyalty was above bribes, 
and their systematic search was rewarded by 
finding in the prisoner's stockings the papers 
which Arnold had written to Sir Henry Clin- 
ton, betraying the post and army entrusted to 
him. When Major Andre was taken from the 
place of capture, the first stop made was at a 



anD Sleepy Ibollow 87 

house which is still standing on the old road to 
White Plains, on the opposite side of the valley 
from the Northern Railroad depot. There the 
Adjutant- General of the British Army rested 
on a wooden step at the bottom of the stairway 
and was regaled by a kind-hearted hostess with 
a bowl of bread and milk. The step upon 
which Major Andre sat is still preserved, and 
little alteration has been made in that part of 
the house. Shortly after the war the house in 
question became the property of a family named 
Reed and was sold at a later date to William 
lyandrine, whose son, William B. lyandrine, 
sold it to Mr. Kingsland. It is now the prop- 
erty of Mr. John D. Rockefeller. 

The capture of a large party of British at the 
Van Tassel tavern (the Jacob Mott homestead) 
by Major Hunt, occurred in 1780. Hunt and 
John Archer, with others, had gone to West- 
chester. I have found no record of the source 
by which information reached them of the 
presence of the English party at the Tarry- 
town inn. The}^ came, surrounded the house 
and broke in upon the unsuspecting guests, 
who rose in astonishment and consternation 



88 Cbronicles ot Q;aiTetowu 

from a game of cards they were playing, at the 
challenge of Hunt, who carried a heavy stick 
in his hand. 

" Gentlemen, clubs are trumps." 
In the struggle which ensued before the 
prisoners were secured Major Hunt prevented 
Archer from killing one of his adversaries, tell- 
ing him that * ' the highest sense of honor in a 
soldier is to protect his prisoners." What 
makes this conduct seem the more humane is 
the fact that Hunt's brother had been slain by 
the British only a short time before. This 
story is one of several with which Major Hunt's 
name is associated. Upon another occasion he 
was at See's store, on the Bedford road, when 
he saw a party of English, or Hessians, coming 
down the road. He was unable to cope with 
them and there was nothing to do but to run 
for his life. He set out at a nimble pace in the 
direction of the Cold Spring bridge, where an 
icy little rivulet crossed the Albany turnpike 
(Broadway), in the valley north of the present 
cemetery gate. A prosaic drinking- trough 
now marks the place. Three men followed the 
" rebel," sure that at last they could overhaul 



*■*'). 




-t , 


CO 

3 


%; » 


' o 


r-V 


X 

1- 


• :s • 


1- 


: " 1 


o 


<',\^ 


^ 


1.* 


CO 


■« 


O 


< 


o 


« 


< 


^ 


-3 


.,•"■' ' 


X 

1- 



an& Sleeps •ftjollow 89 

and overpower him. But Hunt was a man of 
rare wind and muscle, and not being bothered 
with the accoutrements of his pursuers, he soon 
tired them. Looking back from time to time, 
he at last perceived that they were tailing off. 
Then he turned (whether he recollected that 
there was a classic precedent for what he did I 
cannot say) and succeeded in mastering them 
one at a time, proving the truth of the adage 
and living ' ' to fight another day. ' ' 

On the 6th of July, 1781, the French army 
marched from Northcastle to Philipsburg, on 
the Tappan Zee, to unite with the Amerian 
encampment there. The place of this camp 
was on hills overlooking the river, betw^een 
Tarrytown and Dobbs Ferry. Between the two 
armies, according to an eye witness, at the bot- 
tom of a ravine there flowed a rivulet. On the 
8th, two days after the arrival of the French- 
men, General Washington reviewed both 
armies. We are told that several of the French 
officers constructed a pretty garden about 
their abode which showed that the encampment 
made some approach to permanency. Eleven 
days passed in this pleasant location, when the 



90 Cbroniclee of Zlarrgtown 

*' General " brought the whole allied force to 
arms. The cause of this alarm was the sound 
of firing which came from the direction of 
Tarrytown, which was close at hand. But 
after ' ' remaining in line of battle for half or 
three quarters of an hour, ' ' according to Count 
de Deux Fonts, they " received orders to re- 
turn to their tents." What happened at 
Tarrytown to make the allied French and 
American armies cock their ears was an action 
as spirited as anything which occurred during 
the whole course of the war, although it was not 
sufficiently important in its connection with 
other events to warrant a place in general his- 
tory. Several British vessels, frigates and 
tenders, had been hunting for American vessels 
loaded with supplies for the army. On the 
evening of the 15th of July, which was a Sun- 
day, two sloops, which were going down the 
river, loaded with powder and cannon, put 
into Tarrytown to avoid the British fleet. The 
enemy followed these vessels closely and there 
seemed little possibility of escape. There were 
in Tarrytown at the time only a sergeant's 
guard of French infantry, and a troop of 



anD Sleeps IboUow 91 

mounted dragoons, commanded by Colonel 
Sheldon, whose regiment lay at Dobbs Ferr3^ 
The latter were at once commanded to dis- 
mount and assist in unloading the stores. But 
although they worked with great celerit}^ it 
was impossible to anticipate the arrival of the 
English ships which came to an anchor and 
began a heavy fire, under cover of which two 
gunboats and four barges were sent to destroy 
the sloops. Captain Hurlburt, of the Second 
Regiment of Light Dragoons, was on board of 
one of the vessels, with twelve men, whose 
equipments consisted only of swords and pis- 
tols. The}^ made what resistance they could, 
but in the end were obliged to jump overboard 
and swim for the shore, upon which the English 
boarded the sloops and set fire to them. They 
could not hold the position more than a few 
moments, owing to the galling fire of the 
French infantry and the dismounted dragoons, 
and hardly had they retired when Hurlburt 
and several other brave men plunged into the 
river and, swimming back to the burning 
sloops, succeeded in extinguishing the flames. 
When we consider the nature of the cargoes 



92 Cbcontclea of Q;arr^town 

which these little vessels carried, and the ter- 
rible risk from explosion which Captain Hurl- 
burt and his companions braved, their act does 
not seem less than heroic. It may be added 
that these brave men received the commenda- 
tion and thanks of General Washington in the 
General Orders of July 19th, four days after 
the event. Captain Hurlburt was wounded 
while in the water and never recovered from 
the effect of his hurt, suffering terribly till death 
relieved him, nearly two years later. As 
authority for this account of the action at 
Tarrytown, we have Count William de Deux 
Pouts' s Campaigns^ Dr. Thatcher's Military 
yoiinial, Moore's Diary of the American Revo- 
lution, and General Washington's Journal for 
1 78 1, besides Doctor Coutant's account and 
minor mention from several sources. 

And now having got down to 1782, we must 
close this chronology with an untoward event. 
In the spring of the year three American militia- 
men, Yerks, Van Wart, and Henry Strong, 
were at Strong's house, which was near the 
Underbill place, when the house was sur- 
rounded by a small party of Tories under 



anD Sleepy Ibollovo 93 

lyieutenant Acherlj^ and the inmates captured 
and taken to New York. Whether they were 
released before the end of the war I have no 
way of knowing. 

A few words relative to Andre's capture may 
not inappropriately be added. The Westchester 
Herald, in its issue of Jan. 28, 1823, published 
the following communication : 

" It seems that Andre cautiously avoided 
the more public routes and travelled on through 
the interior until he arrived within about two 
miles of the present poor-house belonging to 
this town. He stopped at the house of an old 
lad}^ still living, and made the most minute in- 
quiries respecting the precise position of the 
American encampment, informing her that he 
was extremely desirous to arrive at the camp 
by the shortest route and as quickly as possible ; 
especially anxious to know whether the troops 
were near the White Plains or at Tarrytown, 
and very solicitous, apparently, to understand 
all the intelligence respecting their stations. 
She informed him that the last she had heard 
of them was that they were towards the White 
Plains ; upon this he proceeded towards Tarry- 



94 Cbroniclea of tTarrstown 

town. . . . Thus the old lady's inform- 
ing Andre that no American troops were in the 
vicinity of Tarrytown, was the primary cause 
of the defeat of that complicated treacher}^ 
which menaced with destruction the freedom 
and independence of the United States. ' ' 

Another account, which I have seen pub- 
lished but once, is to the effect that when Andre 
was captured the horse that he rode was covered 
with burrs from the pasture, he having made an 
exchange in the course of his journey, leaving 
his own tired nag in the place of a fresh one 
which he ' * borrowed. ' ' 




MYTHS AND LEGENDS 



95 




VI 



THK SPOOK ROCK 



IN the days before the railroad was built, the 
population of Tarrytown was small and the 
majority of the inhabitants were farmers ; good, 
plain, practical people, not given to romancing 
and the inveterate foes of novelty. Some 
elderly folk, whose memories take them back 
to the thirties, remember the story of the 
Spook Rock as it was transmitted to them from 
their parents and grandparents, which should 
satisfy any sceptic of its genuine antiquity. 

Not far from the cottage of Hulda, the witch, 
it stood ; but it was an ancient landmark before 
Sleepy Hollow mothers ever used Hulda' s 
name to frighten their babies into obedience. 
Tradition says that sachems and medicine men 
of the Leni Lenapes built their council-fires 

97 



98 Cbronlcles of darr^town 

about it when the world was young ; for the 
Spook Rock was an Indian shrine. 

One night a young Indian returning late from 
a hunt and passing near the council rock, was 
surprised to see lights moving in that direction, 
while at the same time his ears were assailed 
by the sound of musical voices. Not being 
ignorant of the sacred character of the place 
and the miraculous things that had occurred 
there, his curiosity was at once aroused and he 
crept cautiously from tree to tree till he came 
upon a sight of extraordinary interest. A 
dozen girls, beautiful beyond anything that the 
young man had ever imagined, were dancing 
on the surface of the rock. Linking hands, 
and leaning far outward in the rapid figure, they 
seemed to tread on the very edge of the stone, 
if indeed they touched anything more solid 
than the air at all. To the bewildered and de- 
lighted watcher they were like a ring of forest 
leaves that have been caught up and whirled 
around by the wind. 

Their voices were as sweet as their bodies 
were beautiful and graceful, and no one could 
have mistaken them for anything less than 



an& Sleepi? Ibollow 99 

celestial, evenaf there had not been, in the 
centre of the circle around which they danced, 
a great basket, which, as every one knows, 
is the approved vehicle when heavenly maids 
pay a visit earthward. 

The scene was lit by unearthly flambeaux 
that flared among the trees like Will-o'-the- 
wisps. 

The singing and the dancing grew wilder 
and madder and more fascinating every mo- 
ment, till the solitary spectator forgot himself 
and gave a cry of admiration. In a moment, 
half frightened and half laughing, the bevy 
scrambled into the basket, with little screams 
and pretty panics, like girls that would fain go 
a-slumming and retreat at the first sight of a 
tipsy man. In they crow^ded, hugger-mugger, 
higgledy-piggled}^, all but one, who lingered a 
moment and looked back. She was the most 
beautiful of them all. Then, in a moment, she 
took her place, or rather was dragged in b}' the 
rest and, amid a chorus of laughter, they were 
all whisked out of sight and the young Indian 
was left standing alone in the dark woods. 
Directly over the rock, as he followed the basket 



TOO Cbroniclee of darr^town 

with his eyes, a large star was shining, and he 
knew, of course, that it must be their home. 

That night the young man turned and tossed 
and could get no sleep. When day came he 
discovered that his appetite had failed, which 
is a most unusual thing to happen to an Indian. 
He waited impatiently till night had settled 
down once more, and then, as soon as the vil- 
lage was quiet, he sought the Spook Rock. 

It may have been on that very next night, 
or after weeks or months of waiting, — I do not 
know, — the basket was let down again, and its 
occupants, with many a titter and many inno- 
cent pranks, disembarked and began to dance as 
before. While they were in full swing there was 
a sudden dash among them as a hungry panther 
might drop into the midst of a covy of quail 
that are gossiping together at bedtime. Never 
did birds take to wing more quickly, whirring 
away from danger, than the maidens ; but one 
of them, the most beautiful of all, was held by 
the young hunter, who took her home, tri- 
umphantly, to his empty lodge. 

The quail may be tamed, but be careful that 
on some spring morning it does not hear the 



anD Sleeps IdoUow ioi 

piping of its mates. The star girl made a good 
and loving wife, and when a baby was born to 
her she forgot any longing she may have had 
for her old companions. Three years passed, 
and one night, when the air was peculiarly 
still, a sound of distant singing came to the 
hunter's lodge, and his star wife grew restless, 
and her eyes burned like coals. She murmured 
in her sleep and sang little snatches of strange 
songs. The following night she was missing. 

The little babe in the lodge cried and refused 
such food as the hunter had to give it and 
finally, when it was dead, he hollowed a grave 
for it b}^ the Pocantico and sat down alone once 
more. After a while he took his bow and ar- 
rows and went hunting, but never returned and 
the lodge fell to ruin, so that when the snow 
came it drifted between the bare poles. When 
three years more had gone, and the smell of the 
spring was in the air again, the star wife came 
back. A few hours of absence, she thought, 
and probably her husband had not even missed 
her. A few hours of pleasure — how the time 
had flown ! 

She found the empty lodge sticks with as- 



102 Cbrontcles ot (Tarcstowii 

tonishment. Even the grass was growing 
rank where she had lain by the side of her 
husband and baby only a few hours before. 
Something must be wrong. She had mistaken 
the place and would search for her home. 

Up and down the Pocantico woods — you may 
meet her any spring night, for doubtless she is 
looking there still for the lost lodge. 



Within the present generation the lights 
have been seen moving at night in the neigh- 
borhood of the Spook Rock, and if any adven- 
turous youth will run the risk he may find the 
dancers still tripping and singing on spring 
nights. 

ANDREW'S GHOST 

When Major Andre had been safely disposed 
of at Tappan, and the American arms had re- 
covered from the shock of Arnold's treachery, 
that incident was thought to be concluded. 
After Yorktown, men turned from their swords 
to their plowshares again and gave their atten- 
tion to the arts of peace. Before quiet had 



• ■■• •-: i ..•■: !_ ._ 


?w 


" jfTaBBjgMjMMa 
















^^ *ii. "^'''■^MC** ' ^^ " .,j^^ jpwjij'' 














"■^ 


^H 


-* ^**^^ 



THE POCANTICO RIVER 



anD Sleeps 'toollovv 103 

fairly settled upon the neutral territory it be- 
gan to be whispered that a war reminiscence 
of an alarming character insisted upon recogni- 
tion. Down the post road, on still autumn 
nights, belated wayfarers sometimes heard the 
sound of hoofs. A madly galloping horse 
seemed to approach, but no horse or horseman 
was visible to the keenest eyes. A few re- 
ported that they had seen a formless gray 
shadow whisk by in the neighborhood of the 
swamp that lay by the side of the highway, and 
others declared that the word ** halt " had been 
pronounced in a vSoldierly tone just before the 
galloping ceased. All agreed that the hoof- 
beats stopped as though the rider had reined 
in suddenl3^, and that they were never heard 
further south than the immense old tulip tree, 
known as Andre's tree, that spread its gaunt, 
ghost-like arms in the moonlight. 

This more than usually unsubstantial ghost 
is pertinacious in his appearing, having been 
heard several times within the present decade, 
as the writer, among other witnesses, can 
testify. 

About Andre's tree, another tale may be told. 



104 Cbroniclee of ^arr^tovvti 

This conspicuous landmark gained its name, as 
everybody knew, from the fact that the cap- 
ture of the British spy was accompHshed 
directly beneath it. L<ong after the war it 
stood, a reminder not only of the heroism of 
Paulding, Williams, and Van Wart, but of the 
treachery of Arnold, whose execrated name 
was coupled with that of Judas. The traitor, 
hidden in England, lived for many years ; but 
when at last the end came, and the news of 
his death had travelled slowl)^ to Tarrytown, a 
strange, dramatic scene occurred. While men 
met at the crossroads or the tavern and told 
each other with stern satisfaction that Arnold 
was dead, and decrepit veterans on the store 
*' stoep " became animated once more, recall- 
ing old days ; while the more youthful mem- 
bers of the community were for gaining the 
dominie's consent to having the old church 
bell rung, the sky clouded and a storm burst 
over the village. In the midst of it a terrific 
discharge of lightning, accompanied by a peal 
of thunder that shook the houses, startled the 
villagers. 

After the storm had cleared away, a wonder 



anO Sleepy Ibollow 105 

came to light - that surprised even the most 
rational. Andre's tree, the giant tulip tree 
under which Arnold's schemes had been frus- 
trated, was riven and splintered by the light- 
ning. 

cuffy's prophkcy 

When the old church was a-building, say 
the gossips, Vredryk Flypse bethought him 
that he would interrupt that pious labor, to the 
end that the dam of his new mill might be in 
readiness for the harvest. It was, so to speak 
and in a way, meat before grace that he con- 
templated. But as soon as the dam was com- 
pleted a storm came and washed it away ; so 
that the Lord of the Manor waxed impatient 
and swore incontinently. Thrice did this thing 
transpire after the manner that we have already 
related, and to this day it might have continued 
to happen — Flypse being a firm man and stead- 
fast of his head, which some call obstinate — 
had not one of his slaves, Cuffy, dreamed a 
dream, to the effect that the destruction of the 
dam was due to the abeyance of the work upon 
the church. With that Flypse finished the 



io6 Cbronicles ot ^arrgtown 

church and had no further trouble with the 
dam. 

THK FI.YING DUTCHMAN 

Hendrick Hudson — may his glory never 
grow less — has been a veritable Man-in-the- 
Moon — albeit only a " Half Moon" — to the 
dwellers on the banks of the river that per- 
petuates his name. Some say that he still tacks 
across the length and breadth of the Tappan Zee 
from Dobbs-his- Ferry to Point-no-Point, though 
whether he is thus rewarded with beneficent 
powers with an endless career of discovery, or 
condemned for some unstoried deed to per- 
petual labor, is a disputed point. It is even 
stoutly maintained — or was some years ago, 
when people thought it worth while to cock 
their beliefs saucily — that the Flying Dutch- 
man is not Hendrick at all, but a pirate or 
smuggler of a later day. 

At the risk of being thought an indifferent 
antiquary I must tell what I know about this 
ghostly vessel, which to my ej^es appeared alto- 
gether too modern a craft to have been the 
Half Moon, 



an& Sleepy IboUow 107 

Late on a moonlight evening, several years 
ago, as two friends sat on the rocks by 
Kingsland's round-tower, at the old quarry, 
and looked down upon the river, their atten- 
tion was attracted to a schooner that moved 
swiftly and silently past the point. She was 
coming up the stream and towards the shore 
upon the port tack. In the bright moonlight 
that illuminated her sails, they seemed to stand 
out distinct from the gray of the river. While 
the friends were looking at this inviting craft, 
she disappeared — vanished as completely as 
though she had been engulfed in the Tappan 
Zee, leaving not a single spar to mark the place 
where she went down. But no ship since the 
world began ever sank as quickly as that 
schooner faded from sight. The spectators 
rubbed their eyes and marvelled, but the night 
kept its secret for full twenty minutes when — 
presto ! — there she was again, as fresh as a 
duck that dives and comes up uninjured from 
its bath. Now the vessel was on the starboard 
tack and standing away from the east shore. 
Three times or more the prank was played, and 
the friends wondered, 



io8 Cbronlcles ot ^arr^town 

Was it the Flying Diitchviaji f I, who saw 
this, am willing enough to agree with you that 
it was ; but my friend, who is scientific, offered 
so plausible and rational an explanation that I 
would repeat it here if I was not sure that it 
would wreck your faith as it did mine. 

HUI.DA, THE WITCH 

Reference has been made to the cottage of 
Hulda, which was not far from the Spook 
Rock. To-day nothing is left of that humble 
habitation but a few stones in the side of an 
alder-covered bank, and the trace of a path 
leading to a walled spring. But in the days 
of our nation's birth- throes he was a brave man 
who passed the cottage of the witch, even in 
the daytime. A hundred years ago the people 
took witches seriously. 

Hulda was a Bohemian woman, who came 
without references or kin and settled in the 
midst of conservative folks who were familiar 
with each other's grandparents. To be a 
stranger was to be open to suspicion ; to be 
alone was not respectable. Acting upon a 
well-known principle, recognized in most rural 



auD Sleeps Ibollow 109 

communities, the newcomer is held to be guilty 
till he has proved himself to be innocent. 

Hulda gathered herbs, "simples," in the 
mill woods ; she knew where the boneset grew, 
and vervain, and mandrake, and calamus. Her 
cabin was full of the sweet odor of plants a- 
drying ; specifics for colds and fevers and the 
unsophisticated pains and aches of simple folk. 
She wove baskets, too, and was wise, as a 
woman ought not to be. Rumor, as busy in 
Sleepy Hollow in 1770 as she is in 1897, ^^^^ 
that the wdtch had commerce with the Indians 
who came occasionally into this region from far 
up the State, and exchanged with them secrets 
of black art and ' * yarbs. ' ' 

A tapu, as effectual as ever existed in the 
South Sea islands, cut this w^oman off from 
human intercourse, and when the war came 
she, alone, had no friend to discuss her hopes or 
tell her fears to. From first to last the neutral 
ground got the worst of the Revolution. 
Friends and foes struggled across it and fought 
or fled back again. Every crime in the calen- 
dar was committed in the names of King and 
Congress alike, till the harried remnant of the 



no Cbroiifcles ot ^arrgtown 

people sat among their denuded fields and de- 
pleted barns, and faced starvation and sickness 
with such stoicism as they could muster. 
Sometimes an undetected hand left dainties 
that were hard to procure, on the door-step or 
the window-sill of some house where want and 
pain had settled together ; but the donor was 
invisible. 

In those days men patrolled the highways to 
intercept the cattle-thieves that ran off their 
stock, and as the population became smaller, 
the women sometimes took their places with 
flint-lock and powder-horn. Hulda, the witch, 
presented herself for this service, but no one 
wanted her companionship. At last one day a 
force of British landed from one of the trans- 
ports that had sailed up the Hudson and com- 
menced a march which was to bring them, by 
means of the King's highwa}^ to the rear of 
Putnam's position, at Peekskill. As they 
marched in imposing array a volley greeted 
them from behind walls and tree-trunks. It 
was I^exington repeated in Westchester County. 
Not to be repulsed this time, Hulda fought 
with her neighbors, using her rifle with great 



auD SleepB Ibollow m 

effect, so that^ she was singled out for ven- 
geance ; and before the redcoats retreated to 
their boats they had, by means of a sortie, 
overtaken and killed the witch. 

Animated by a new respect, those who had 
seen her fight avowed that, witch or no witch, 
she had earned a right to Christian burial. 
Reverently they carried her to her cabin, and 
while there discovered between the leaves of 
her Bible (?) a paper informing them of a little 
store of gold that she desired to have dis- 
tributed among the widows whose husbands 
had fallen for their country. 

Hulda's grave, it is said, is close by the 
north wall of the old church, as though her 
neighbors, having done her what despite they 
could during her lifetime, were desirous to 
atone after her death by an exhibition of hearty 
respect. 

RAVEN ROCK 

Nowhere in this part of the country are the 
ravens to be found, though it is thought that 
they may have been plentiful a century or 
more ago. The crows, who are known to be 



112 Cbronicles of a;arrBtown 

inveterate neighbors of their larger cousins, 
perhaps drove them out. Upon their exodus 
these birds of ill-omen left their names in more 
than one lonely spot, to couple with dark asso- 
ciations. 

Raven Rock is a detached portion of the 
steep, rocky, eastern side of Buttermilk Hill, 
which a deep fissure has long separated from 
the mass, and the fragment, becoming inde- 
pendent territory, set up a mythology of its 
own. Not content with one legend, it has two, 
at least, to boast. 

A woman, so we have read, wandered out of 
the path in a blinding snowstorm and sought 
shelter from the blast of the wind in the ravine 
behind Raven Rock. The snow drifted in 
upon her and she went to sleep never to waken 
again. Ever since, that cleft has been a melan- 
choly place of refuge, for it is said that the 
spirit of the poor wayfarer meets the belated 
wanderer with cries that sound like the scream- 
ing of the wind, and gestures that remind one 
of the sweep of snowdrifts, warning others 
away from the spot that she found so fatal. 
There are, in all the land, many legends of 




< 

UJ 

> 

< 

a: 
G5 

X 

o 

cc 

3 
I 

o 



auD Sleeps IboUow 113 

many ghosts, hut none I think of so kindly and 
Christian a complexion as this poor spectre of 
Raven Rock. 

But the wraith of the white woman is not the 
only one that the rock boasts. An Indian girl, 
who perished of a jealous lover, has an older 
claim ; and the ravens used to tell of still a 
third, a Colonial Dame, who fled from the 
dreadful attentions of a too amorous Tory 
raider in the dark days of The Old War." 

Nebulous legends they are, every one, and 
in these hard days of unbelief there are people 
who, not knowing the stories in detail, have 
even expressed a doubt concerning the ghosts 
themselves. 

THE WOMAN OF THK ClylFF 

It is no discredit to a ghost or a ghost-story, 
but rather in the nature of them both, to be 
evanescent. No apology need be offered there- 
fore for the Woman of the Cliff, who flits along 
the top of the rocks on a certain ledge that 
overlooks the village. When a storm is rising 
she is sometimes seen hurrying among the tree- 
trunks and over the moss, and her voice rises 



114 Cbtoniclcs of (TarrBtown 

with the wind, which it resembles not a little. 
Whatever the tragic story of this poor ghost, 
she has not yet found an opportunity to tell it 
to any one. 

kidd's rock 

This has long been the name of a rock that 
is a part of the river- wall on the outer side of 
Kingsland's point. There is a summer-house 
built over the rock and if there were ever gold- 
en riches beneath it, or if there are treasures 
hidden there still, it is not (fortunately) the 
duty of a sober historian to tell. When it is 
remembered that the first Vredryk Flypse and 
his confreres were charged with being the 
partners in Kidd's nefarious trade, and that 
the rock was at the very entrance to the bay 
upon the upper end of which stood the castle 
and port of Sir Vredryk, it does not seem at all 
impossible that the pirate may have found a 
convenient trysting-place at the rock. 

THK HKADI.KSS HE^SSIAN 

The ' * lyCgend of Sleepy Hollow ' ' belongs to 
Washington Irving, and it is an enchanted 



auD Sleeps t)ollow 115 

fruit that crumbles into ashes if any one touches 
it but the magician who fashioned it. But the 
Headless Hessian belongs to the neighborhood, 
and Brom Bones is well remembered still. 

About twenty years ago the writer was pass- 
ing, one morning, through the little lane that 
borders the Pocantico, between Broadway and 
the site of the burned factory (Brombacher's), 
when he overheard an Irishwoman, who stood 
by her cottage gate, relate this marvellous tale 
to her neighbors : 

** It was n't late, mebby not mower than tin 
o'clock, an' me waitin' here be the gate for 
Dinny to come in an' he only shteppin' up to 
Johnny Manin's wid de can, when upon me 
sowl, thrue as I 'm standin' here, I see right 
out there in the road a big, black, shadder-like, 
widout any head, an' him on horseback at 
that." 

There was no doubting the sincerity of the 
tones. I looked at the ghost-seer. Honesty 
and ignorance shared the realm between them. 
Had she possibly had her imagination fired by 
reading Irving ? It was easier to believe that 
she had actually seen the Headless Hessian. 



ii6 Cbronicles of (Tarrgtown 

Allow the possibility of the apparition, and I 
will vShow you why the place where the woman 
thought she had seen him was most appropri- 
ate. A few rods up the stream the ford and 
abutments still show where the ancient bridge 
stood, before the course of the post-road was 
changed : a few rods down one finds the pres- 
ent bridge. What more natural than that a 
poor, headless spook should wander irresolute 
between the old site and the new ? 

That some untoward influence occasionally 
manifests itself at the new bridge is not un- 
known. A few years ago a sober and careful 
citizen from the lane, returning from the dis- 
tant saloon with a pitcher of beer which he was 
expecting to drink in the bosom of his family, 
was dragged upon the bridge by invisible hands, 
though it was clear moonlight, and flung over 
the high parapet into the water of the Pocan- 
tico, where he swam for some time, being 
miraculously unable to find the shore, and was 
at last rescued by his neighbors. Another, 
who had been in the clutches of the same un- 
canny wrestler, succeeded in escaping without 
a ducking. 



anD Sleepy IboUow 117 

Brom Bones,\wlio figures in the courtship of 
* ' Sleepy Hollow ' ' as the practical joker who im- 
personated the Headless Horseman, was in Mr. 
William See's store, with a lot of other ancient 
cronies, when the first copy of the immortal Le- 
gend reached Tarrytown. No longer " Brom, 
the devil," butolduncleAbr'm Van Tassel, the 
patriarch listened in great wrath when someone 
told him that Washington Irving had put him 
in a book. Grasping his ponderous stick, he 
started for the door. 

'' Hole on, Uncle Brom ! where you goin' so 
fast " ? they cried. 

" Goin' to lick that writin' feller till he can't 
see! " roared the newly immortalized. 

JACOB THK ROMAN 

The story of ' ' Jacob the Roman ' ' belongs by 
courtesy, if not by copyright, to the Rev. Dr. 
John Knox Allen, who received it from the 
late Mrs. Eliza Ann See, and told it first in 
a historical address, which was afterwards pub- 
lished by the Tarr)rtown Historical Society. 
We give it in his own words : 

* ' Just at the foot of the high point called 



ii8 Cbronicles of tTarr^town 

Kyk-uit^^ there long ago dwelt a man who was 
called Jacob the Roman. He was a German b}^ 
birth, and in the centuries past his ancestors 
had come, perhaps with Julius Caesar, from 
Rome, and after the conclusion of the war with 
the Gauls had settled among the now friendly 
War-rne7i, whom we to-day call German. 
Iviving in the highlands of Southern Germany 
the old name still clung to them. ' Jacob the 
Roman ' was well educated, but he was poor. 
He was respected in his native town, and had 
won the affection of the Herr Obermeister's 
lovely daughter — her name Judah Trenagh. 
But poverty hindered the progress of his suit, 
and he determined to try his fortunes in this 
New World. Judah would not be left be- 
hind. By night they left the town, and trav- 
elling by unfrequented paths at last reached 
the coast. But now their money was ex- 
hausted. Nothing daunted, they secured their 

* "Lookout," now pronounced Kakeout ; a name 
given to a sharply-defined hill rising about five hun- 
dred feet above tide water, and situated about a mile 
and a half due east from the Hudson River. It was 
once a coast survey station, and was used in early 
times by the Indians as a signal-hill. 




be 

I 
o 

c 

a 

be 



P. - 

(LI .in 



t 

to 



<u u 

i o 



^ 
•^^ 



^ 



anO Sleeps Ibollow 119 

passage across tlie ocean by articles of agree- 
ment with the captain of a vessel, which 
articles allowed him to sell the two for a term 
of years to whoever in this land would pay the 
price of their passage, and secure it from the 
proceeds of their labor. This was no unusual 
thing in that day. Those thus sold w^ere called 
Redemptioners , becaUvSe the price of their re- 
demption from bondage was fixed at so much 
labor, or its equivalent in money. A calamity 
not anticipated befell them on arrival — they 
were sold away from each other. Exchanging 
vows of eternal fidelity, they parted. 

' ' In time Jacob worked his freedom, and on 
the east side of Kyk-uit near a little brook 
bought a little homestead and built for himself 
a house. He had learned to vSpeak the Low 
Dutch of the people, and as he was a tailor by 
trade they came to him to make their garments, 
and came to listen to his many stories of life in 
the Old World. He was respected by all ; he 
increased in goods, but was not happ}^ It was 
years since he had seen Judah. Where w^as 
she ? Was she living ? How should he ever 
find her ? His former master told him he had 



120 Cbroniclea of ^arr^town 

heard she had been sold somewhere west of 
the river. His love stimulated his wits. 
Anthony Segere was der Post-reiter^ and made 
his monthly circuit with the colonial mail from 
New Amsterdam to Fort Orange, going up the 
west vSide of the river and down the east. Jacob 
confided in him, and the postman espoused his 
cause with sympathy, and promised to inquire 
in every village for ' one Trenagh, ' according 
to the description Jacob gave him ; and if he 
found her, and she were willing, he promised to 
bring her back with him on his horse. For this 
service Jacob was to give him seven dollars in 
New York currency. Jacob showed him the 
money, and laid it away against the demand. 
The postman went and made inquiry, return- 
ing month after month on his steady old horse, 
and brought no news. Jacob's heart sank 
within him, just as do the hearts of people in 
more splendid romances. 

**At last the old postman met a man who 
thought he knew a woman who answered the 
description. He would see her, and if she 
were the one would bring her to Fort Orange 
against the time of the next circuit. Jacob was 



auD Sleepg IboUow 121 

wild with excitement. Was this, the woman 
or not ? What joy or sorrow would the post- 
man bring him next month ? The month 
rolled round. The slow steed came ambling 
down the river-roads and up the hills and bore 
Anthony and his saddle-bags, and on the 
pillion was seated Judah too. Any good novel 
will tell you what they did when they met. 

'' One incident is to be added. Judah often 
told how she attracted the attention of whole 
villages on the first day's ride on horseback 
from Fort Orange. She wondered why the 
people stared and smiled as they saw her, for 
she was a comely woman and decently dressed. 
She asked the old postman wh}^ the\^ were 
amused. He smiled. She was not an eques- 
trian, and in her innocence supposed it was not 
possible to ride a horse safely except astride. 
And she had not liked to embrace the old man, 
and so had mounted looking the other way. 
It was hardly to be wondered at, that the peo- 
ple smiled as they saw her clinging to the sad- 
dle-bags, and with her face turned toward the 
scenes they were fast, or rather slowly, leaving. 
This story she herself told to Mrs. See. The 



122 Cbronicles ot ^arr^town 

old postman showed her how to ride upon the 
pillion, and their journey ceased to attract 
especial attention. There was, of course, love 
in a cottage, though the furniture at first was 
little, one old chest, containing crockery and 
utensils, serving also as tailor's bench and 
table. Eight children were born to them, 
whose descendants are said to be with us to 
this day. These two were members in good 
and regular standing of the old church, and 
Mrs. See especially emphasized their piety. 
In iiis old age the good Jacob said one day : 
* I prays mine Cott, I never knows a sick ped.* 
That very evening as his wife approached to 
help him to bed, he met her with the old look 
of love, stretched out his hands to her, tried to 
speak, and was gone. ' ' 

THK CHARTER OAK 

As late as the Civil War there was standing 
upon the bluff which overlooks the old mill 
from the south, a mammoth oak-tree, whose 
story, according to the old people, had to do 
with the signing of a charter or some other im- 
portant paper beneath its shade. Some said 



and Sleeps IboUow 123 

that the deed of tHe old church was executed 
there, others that Flypse concluded his pur- 
chase of the Pocantico from the Indians on this 
spot ; and again it was stated that the important 
affair occurred at a later day and was connected 
with Washington. The story, whatever it was, 
had been forgotten, and all that remained was 
a fixed recollection that there had been a legend 
of some kind connected with the old tree. 

Some time in the sixties I think it was, that 
this noble relic of the forest primeval fell a 
victim to the village vandals. It had escaped 
their notice by some happy chance for many 
years, but at last its day of doom came and the 
axe destroyed in a few hours, what the forces 
of nature had been centuries in bringing to 
perfection. 

THK KYK-UIT VOYAGKR 

** I '11 do it, if it takes me a month of Sun- 
days ; " said Rambout Van Dam, adding by 
way of confirmation a reference to the old 
gentleman who had better be nameless. Van 
Dam had attended a merrymaking at Kyk-uit, 
and being in a pot-valiant mood he swore 



124 Cbronicles ot ^arcgtown 

roundly that he would reach the Palisades in 
his boat before the dawn of the Sabbath, 
though Saturday night was far spent when the 
vow was registered. 

'* You '11 never," said his friends. 

'' I will," quoth Rambout. 

" Better make a night of it here ! " 

" Not if I row from now till doomsday." 

Rambout found his boat where he had left it, 
rocking quietly in the bay by the old mill. 
Embarking, bravely he set out for his destina- 
tion at a rate of speed that bid fair to fulfill his 
promise and land him at the foot of the Pali- 
sades an hour before sunrise. 

But when Sunday morning came Rambout 
did not appear in his accustomed place, and his 
neighbors shook their heads seriously, having 
their own opinion of the morality and sobriety 
of Tarry town. A week passed, and another 
Sabbath did not restore Van Dam. Then in- 
quiries were made and finally the fact was 
accepted that the bold little navigator was lost. 

As time passed, a new sensation disturbed 
the people who lived near the river bank. 
Skippers plying from point to point along the 



and Sleeps Ibollow 125 

Tappan Zee had a strange story to tell. They 
had heard the sound of rapid oars on still 
nights and had been hailed by an invisible 
boatman. A new ghost was on his rounds. 
How long the Dutchman is doomed to pull his 
weary oar it is impossible to guess ; but if there 
is a limit in time or distance, it seems as though 
he must soon reach it after a century and a 
half of labor. 





VII 



OI.D SITES AND HIGHWAYS 



AN octogenarian, writing his early reminis- 
cences of Tarrytown for the Pocantico 
Gazette (1846) says : *' When I was young an 
old man pointed out a maple stump as the re- 
mains of the tree that was used by Capt. Daniel 
Martlings to fasten his market boat to. Before 
the Revolutionary war there was a dock run out 
in the cove opposite the maple tree, and Captain 
Martlings built his dwelling-house on the shore, 
while one Abram Fogal, another boatman, 
built a house on the lot where Jacob Requa's 
house stands, which was occupied by George 
Munson for a tavern. The next house was 
built for a dwelling and store on the site of the 
one lately belonging to Jacob Onderdonk, and 
William Paulding erected the one now occupied 

126 



Cbionicies ot (Tarrgtown 127 

by General Paulding, where he also set up a 
store. The settlement was hitherto confined to 
the water's edge, but now one Edward Couen- 
hoven erected a building for a store and tavern 
on the site since in possession of Martin Smith, 
and Abram Martlings put up that occupied by 
the late Widow Child. The splendid residence 
of N. Bayles was then the site of a small house 
belonging to one Dykman. Besides these, a 
house built by George Comb on the ground now 
owned by Thos. Dean (on the southwest corner 
of Main Street and Broadway), a little house 
near by and two down on the shore, one of 
which was built where John Leonard lives, by 
Isaac Martlings, comprised all the village pre- 
vious to the Revolutionary war. No, there was 
another, built and occupied by Abram Fogal, 
which made twelve at the time that the war 
broke out." 

The octogenarian, whose account we will 
quote further, did not mention the Van Tassel 
(old Mott) house, nor several others which lay 
at a greater distance, notably the Davids home- 
stead. Sunny Side, the Manor house, and the 
Reed, or Landrine house — to which Major 



128 Cbroniclee ot C^arr^town 

Andre was taken after his capture. It is prob- 
able that the aged writer confined his effort of 
memory to the west side of the turnpike road — 
that is to say, Broadway. 

Mr. Bolton, in his History of Westchester 
County^ seems to have followed this account 
blindly and without reflection, as he did the 
genealogical tables of the Filipse family and 
other data, without taking the trouble to verify, 
or even to reflect ; for he gives twelve houses 
as the total in Tarrytown up to the time of the 
war. 

From other sources the following accounts 
seem to agree : 

The old Paulding House was near the termi- 
nus of Dock Street, which is the left-hand fork 
of lower Main Street. It stood on the edge of 
a pleasant bay which used to indent the shore 
to the south of the present depot. William 
Paulding, who built it, was the father of Gen- 
eral Paulding, who afterwards built where 
Miss Helen Gould's place now is. James 
Kirke Paulding, the friend of Irving, who was 
joint author with him of the Salmagundi 
Papers, was a brother of William. He spent 



anO Sleeps Ibollow 129 

much of his boyhood at this old house. General 
William Paulding was a member of the New 
York State Constitutional Convention in 1821, 
and Mayor of New York City, with an inter- 
mission of one year, from 1824 to 1829. Philip 
R. Paulding, son of the preceding, sold the 
present Gould place to George Merritt. 

The Afartlmgs House. — Abram Martlings, 
the hero of many an adventure in the troublous 
days of the Revolution, lived on the knoll 
which has been known in later days as the 
Cliff house property. The Fowlers, who 
owned it several years ago,, improved the 
house and grounds greatly. This is the place 
that occupies the inner side of the curve of 
Main Street on the steep block between the 
old postoffice and the bank. 

Captain Daniel Martlings' is still standing. 
It is on the corner of Dock and Water Streets, 
north of where the Paulding house used to 
stand. This Captain Daniel was the boatman 
who used to fasten his market boat to a tree 
on the shore. 

The Onderdonk house and Captain VogeVs 
were near the corner of Dock and Water 



130 Cbronlcles of ^arr^town 

Streets. The Captain Vogel mentioned here 
is evidently the same that ' ' an Octogenarian ' ' 
speaks of as one ' * Abram Fogal, another boat- 
man." 

Edward Couenhoven^ s house stood on the 
corner of Main Street and Broadway, where 
the drugstore of Russell and I^aurie now is. 
For many years this site was known as the 
Martin Smith tavern and every notable man 
who travelled from New York to Albany in 
the old stage-coach days, has probably made a 
stop at what was, in its time, quite a famous 
hostelry. 

'' Tommy ^^ Dean' s was opposite. Not a few 
of the older residents of Tarrytown remember 
Thomas Dean, and the store that he kept, where 
the farmers for six miles around used to do all 
their trading thirty-five or forty years ago. 
The wagons, in long procession, got as near his 
door as they could on market days, and the 
store became an important produce exchange 
for men who never dreamed of shipping direct 
to New York for themselves. The old house 
was built by George Comb. Thomas Dean 
was the son of John Dean, who was one of the 




I- z 

CO liJ 

a: -J 

i «> 

Q CO 

2 i 

-J o 



anO Sleeps Ibollow 131 

four men left at the Davis farm when Paulding 
and his party separated on the day of Andre's 
capture. He was also the hero of the skirmish 
elsewhere cited, which took place on this very 
corner. His grandson is Professor Dean, of 
Columbia College. Just below the Thomas 
Dean house was the Sniffiii house. The west 
half of the Bayles house, between the present 
postoflfice and the Cliff (Martlings) house, was 
the Dyckman Homestead^ once an important 
unit in the little sum of residences. Isaac 
Martli7igs, the martyr, lived, I believe, in a 
house which stood to the south of the Paulding 
place. Boyce' swdj$> on Franklin Street, Gabriel 
Requa's was east of the spring on Water Street; 
that is, nearly opposite the Paulding house. 

The yacob Mott House or Elizabeth Van Tassel 
Tavern. — More than sixty years before the 
* ' embattled farmers ' ' at Concord ' ' fired the 
shot heard round the world, ' ' when New York 
City was a village with five or six thousand 
inhabitants, and the Manor of Filipsburg 
(Tarrj^town) a hamlet in the wilderness, one 
Martlings lived in that house on the King's 
highway. It was a solid, sturdy stone struc- 



132 Cbroniclee of ^Tarri^town 

ture, designed to withstand the ravages of time 
and weather and to repel the attacks of savage 
neighbors. So well did the builders accom- 
plish their purpose that it has outclassed all 
contemporary dwellings in the neighborhood 
except " Flypse's castle," the residence of the 
Lord of the Manor. At last, at what date I 
cannot say, it became a house of refreshment 
for man and beast, and during the period of 
the war for independence was known as the 
Elizabeth Van Tassel Tavern. 

Of course, an inn that kept its doors open at 
that day on the harassed territory that lay be- 
tween the opposing British and Continental 
armies had its full share of romantic incidents. 
More than once it must have been the victim 
of raids by the cowboys and skinners, and 
Mistress Van Tassel was no doubt a discreet 
woman to keep a roof over her head at all in 
such troublous times. If the old walls could 
retain a photographic impression of the worthies 
that stopped within them, what a gallery it 
would be — Washington and Putnam, Light 
Horse Harry Lee and Madcap Anthony Wayne, 
Knyphausen, the raider, and younger sprigs 



ant) SleepB Ibollow 133 

of the British ^ nobility, sent over to win their 
spurs. About the time of the battle of White 
Plains an American or French officer is said to 
have lain for some time in the parlor wounded, 
and there the Father of His Country used to 
bow his tall figure through the doorway in a 
daily visit to him. Once, says tradition, when 
the British gunboats were anchored out in the 
Tappan Zee, and were rather careless in the 
disposition of their ammunition, a cannon ball 
found the tavern, but was considerate enough 
to enter by the window instead of making a 
breach in the walls. 

The tavern was the American headquarters 
when the Continental forces were in this neigh- 
borhood, and when public measures were dis- 
cussed by General Hammond and the local 
Committee of Safety, tradition says that they 
made their rendezvous here, and there is little 
doubt that many a plan was hatched and many 
a movement forestalled beneath the shelter of 
its roof. Does any one suppose that the dis- 
creet landlady would betray her kinsman, Van 
Tassel, or the redoubtable Abram Martlings 
(namesake of the builder) when they planned 



134 Cbrontcles of ^arr^town 

their romantic and historic raid upon the 
Island of Manhattan, or met on their return to 
glory in having eluded the Hessian guard and 
reduced Oliver de Lancey's house to ashes ? 

I have elsewhere told how Major Hunt cap- 
tured a party there, when ' 'clubs were trumps. ' ' 
But better than any of the war stories is the 
delicious romance which Washington Irving 
associated with the homestead when he made 
it the scene of the courtship of Sleepy Hollow. 
Mr. Irving was a frequent visitor at the old 
house, especially during the time that his 
sister boarded there with the Mott family, and 
it is due to his direct interposition that Mr. 
Jacob Mott refrained from making damaging 
alterations in the building after his purchase 
of it. Even before he himself had enriched it 
beyond price he deemed it worth a personal 
effort to preserve. 

One of the completest folk-stories in any 
language is that which Washington Irving 
wrote of the loves and the floutings, the haps 
and mishaps of Katrina Van Tassel, Ichabod 
Crane, Brom Bones, and the rest of the people 
of the familiar legend. The scene of the cburt- 



an& Sleeps IboUow 135 

ship of Sleepy'Hollow, of the dance and jeal- 
ousies, was laid here in the old stone house. 
Here Katrina, the belle, set her admirers by 
the ears with her coquetries; here the quilting 
frolic drew the lads and lassies of the countr}^- 
side together; here the farmers, in pewter 
buckles and stupendous brass-buttoned coats, 
with blue homespun stockings and eelskin 
queues, ogled the damsels in long waisted short- 
gowns ; and the elect were regaled with 
doughty doughnuts and tender ol}^ keoks, and 
all the profusion of good things Vv^herewith the 
narrator makes the mouth of his reader water. 

In compliance with the vote of the citizens of 
Tarrj^town in 1896, the school-trustees bought 
the old Mott house and tore it down to erect a 
new schoolhouse on the site. 

The Davids Homestead, built somewhere about 
the middle of the last centur}^ and still the 
property of a descendant of its builder, stands 
on the ridge which overlooks the village of 
North Tarrj^town from the south side of the 
Bedford Road. Here Washington made a halt 
and was entertained after the battle of White 
Plains. Pursuers were then upon his track, 



136 Cbrontclee of ^arrgtown 

and, arriving at the house soon after he had left, 
slashed the door-posts with their sabres in 
wanton anger at having missed him. The 
marks of the cuts are still there. It was at the 
Davids place that the party who were with 
Paulding on the night preceding the capture 
of Andre, separated just before that important 
event, and so excluded worthy John Dean from 
a share in the glory which still attaches to the 
names of Paulding, Williams, and Van Wart. 

The Wm. Landrine House, that was bought 
of a family named Reed, and by them from the 
people who occupied it during the Revolution, 
is the place where Andre was taken after his 
capture. It faces the South from the old county- 
house road, and is on the north side of the reser- 
voir lake. It is still standing and is owned by 
Mr. John D. Rockefeller. 

Wolff ert Eckefs. — The house that Washing- 
ton Irving has described in Wolf erf s Roost, and 
which he made his own home, will be spoken 
of under its better known name of *' Sunny- 
side," in the account, given elsewhere, of 
Irving' s life in Tarrytown. 

The AndrS Brook divides the twin villages, 



atiD Sleeps tbollow 137 

Tarrytown being in Greenburg, and North 
Tarry town in Mount Pleasant. The seat of 
the ancient Manor of Filipsburg, which be- 
came tlie property of the Beekmans after the 
Revolution, was in what is now North Tarry- 
town. The estate dwindled to a mere fraction 
of its former size till in December, 1822, the 
' ' Beekman Farm ' ' was advertised for sale, 
upon the death of Gerard G. Beekman, the 
elder. The boundaries given are mainly those 
of the village of North Tarrytown as it is to- 
da}^ The advertisement in the Westchester 
Herald was as follows : 

* ' For Sale. Forty-five (probably 450) acres 
of very Valuable I^and : Situated near the 
banks of the North River, about twenty-eight 
miles from the city of New York and being a 
part of the farm of the late Gerard G. Beekman, 
Ksq. The above tract of land lies nearly ad- 
joining the village of Tarry-Town, and is 
bounded on the East by the Highland Turn- 
pike Road, on the West and North by the 
Public Market Road leading to Martling and 
Van Wart's landing, and on the South by a 
brook called Major Andre's Brook, being the 



138 Cbronlcles ot C^arr^town 

Divisiou Line between the towns of Mount 
Pleasant and Greenburg. 

' ' This land has many advantages as a stand 
for Business. The land itself is excellent and 
there are several pleasant situations for buildiiig 
upon it. It is, besides well watered and may 
be conveniently laid out and sold in Small 
lyOts. In the hands of an enterprising man it 
would soon become the site of a Flourishing 
Village. Upon the whole it cannot be justly 
appreciated without viewing it. 

' ' Persons inclined to purchase will please ap- 
ply to Mrs. Cornelia Beekman, or Gerard G. 
Beekman, w^ho reside near the premises or to 
Frederick Depeyster or Stephen D. Beekman 
in the city of New York. The terms will be 
moderate and accommodating to the pur- 
chaser. ' ' 

The "Highland Turnpike Road," the 
" Albany Post Road," and " Broadway " are 
the same. * ' The Public highway leading to 
Martlings and Van Wart's lyanding " was the 
road, long since disused, which was a con- 
tinuation of Bedford Road between Broadway 
and the river, to the north of the present Beek- 



anD Slecpg Ibollow 139 

man Avenue. The name by which all of that 
portion of Tarrytown situated between Van 
Courtlandt Street, Beekman Avenue, and the 
river was known until quite recently, was 
Beekmantown, and indeed, is still called so by 
many old residents. North Tarrytown, the 
incorporated village, is only Beekmantown 
under an alias. 

Probably few of the older inhabitants of 
either town have forgotten a certain sermon, 
preached by a minister of one of the Tarrytown 
churches, in which he asked, * * Can any good 
thing come out of Beekmantown ? ' ' The witti- 
cism was uncalled for, and belonged to the 
same boomerang family as Doctor Burchard's 
famous three R's. 

The Albany Post Road was generally the 
same as the present Broadway, as far north as 
the Andre monument, or that neighborhood. 
From near that point it swerved more to the 
east than it does now and met the present road 
again at the old church. Exactly what its 
course was between those two landmarks has 
never been determined, or rather, has been de- 
termined differently by every man who has 



I40 Cbtonicles of ^arrgtown 

written on the subject. It seems to me proba- 
ble that the eastward trend brought it some- 
where near the intersection of the aqueduct 
and the Bedford Road, and that thence it 
swept in a liberal curve through the Anderson 
or Weber property toward the old church and 
mill. It crossed the Pocantico by a bridge 
which was several rods northeast of the present 
one. The abutments may be found by follow- 
ing the stream up to the old ford. 

Petticoat I^ane, the present White Plains 
Road, was the first to intersect the Post Road 
south of the town. The next was the Market 
Road that is now Main Street, and the third 
the Bedford Road, which at various times has 
been known as the Connecticut and the old 
White Plains Road. There were other roads, 
built by farmers for their convenience in get- 
ting to church or to market, but the ones men- 
tioned were the principal, and, with the excep- 
tion of Water Street and Franklin, and a little 
part of Washington, long the only streets in 
Tarry town. 

CarVs Mill afterwards became Hart's, and 
the modest building was overshadowed by 




OLD LANE 



anC) SleepB Ibollow 141 

roomy ice-houses. All are now in ruins. It 
was of unknown antiquity, the original Sleepy 
Hollow Mill, where Mr. Irving loved to come 
to listen to the musical flow of the cool water 
over the brown old wheel, and gossip with 
Tom, Dick, and Harry over all the quaint and 
curious lore of the countryside. The original 
mill at Carl's was a little saw-mill and the 
Pocantico above and below it was the angler's 
delight for many a year. 

The Sleepy Hollow Road ran north from the 
Bedford Road. Its settlement has not been in- 
cluded with the original Tarrytown nucleus 
because they were not parts of the same com- 
munity. Just above the junction, on the Bed- 
ford Road, another house of Revolutionary 
date stood. I think it was Captain Romer's. 

The valley which is immortal under the 
name of Sleepy Hollow, is several miles in 
length, its general course being north and 
south, and the hills which border it broken by 
tributary valleys. Its most extensive branch 
is that through which the Pocantico Creek 
leaves the Sleepy Hollow valley for the valley 
of the Hudson. 



142 Cbronicles of ^arrgtown 

In the year 1827 slavery was abolished in 
the State of New York, though whether the 
institution would not have died a natural 
death, without the intervention of the law, is 
an open question. Without doubt the yoke of 
servitude in New York State was a very mild 
one. Public sentiment had as much to do with 
the matter as the law had, and public sentiment 
refused to sanction cruelty. To be sure, pun- 
ishment had to be resorted to at times, but it 
is a notable fact that the servant was not left to 
the tender mercies of an offended master when 
he transgressed. The justice and deliberation 
of the people of this part of the country were 
never better attested than in the appointment 
of a public slave- whipper, whose duty it was 
to see that punishment was fairly administered 
to refractory slaves. 

The Tarrytown slave-whipper (dreadful 
title !) was a mild and humane Quaker gentle- 
man named Conklin, who lived in a pleasant 
farm-house which is yet standing on a hill- 
slope north of the I^ongwood Road, between 
Sleepy Hollow and Pocantico Hills. Two very 
tall pine trees tower above the dwelling and 



anD Sleeps Ibollow 143 

near it, to the east, is an old stone mill. Be- 
yond the house, northward to the Sleepy Hol- 
low Road, extends a walled road bordered by 
ancient locust trees, and in a field only a few 
hundred yards away, a large bowlder stands 
from which one may overlook the valley of the 
Pocantico. The rock is granitic, and nearly 
perpendicular on two sides : its height is 
twelve or fifteen feet, and its greatest hori- 
zontal dimensions somewhat more. 

The brook which has its source near this old 
house flows beside the Longwood Road on its 
course to the Pocantico; and where the new 
Croton Aqueduct crosses its path it is spanned 
by a massive and elaborate stone gate. There 
are still left in its mimic pools a few feeble de- 
scendants of the numerous and vigorous trout 
that used to inhabit it. The Quaker slave- 
whipper — whose office seems to have been 
something of a sinecure — lived long after the 
abolition of his office, and is well remembered 
by men now living. 




VIII 

TARRYTOWN IN WAR TIMKS 

THE call to arms which roused the entire 
country, North and South, woke the 
people of Tarry town and hurried many of them 
to the front. Some of those who went away at 
that time never came back ; their names are 
engraved upon the soldiers' monument in the 
cemetery, others returned to be honored by 
their neighbors ; and a little remnant are still 
with us. It is exactly the same story, word for 
word, which might be written of any village in 
the United States. The same burst of patriotic 
enthusiasm; the same active preparation; the 
same bravery of women, who had the harder 
task of waiting between hope and fear; the 
same partings and reunions — only a change of 
names upon the muster rolls. 

144 



Cbr.onicles of ^arrgtown 145 

There were the usual animosities. Some 
men were denounced as Copperheads ; and 
neighbors and friends were suddenly estranged 
by the conflicting opinions of the times. 

It has chanced that these words are written 
on Decoration Day, 1897. In thirty- two years 
the number of those who follow the drum and 
carry the flag to the graves where their de- 
parted comrades lie in Sleepy Hollow has 
dwindled to a mere handful. They remind us 
that another generation has come to the front, 
and the event they celebrate is being crowded 
back into the perspective of history. 

-Perhaps the most exciting episode of the Civil 
War time was the exodus of the colored people 
at the time of the '63 draft riots. In another 
place. Rev. Abel T. Stewart's action in stopping 
the rioters is referred to. When the danger 
seemed imminent to citizens of negro blood, 
large parties of fugitives of that race abandoned 
their houses and took to the woods, not stop- 
ping till they had reached the fastnesses of 
Buttermilk Hill and equally secluded strong- 
holds. The presence of a government gunboat 
in the river soon restored confidence how^ever. 



146 Cbronicles of trarrgtown 

The excitement was allayed and the refugees 
returned to their homes after a few days. 

One of the immediate effects of the war was 
an increase in business activity, which, for a 
while, Tarrytown shared with the rest of the 
country. During that period the population 
increased somewhat, and a more extravagant 
style of living came into vogue with the influx 
of wealthy New Yorkers. 

The first body of men to volunteer from the 
neighborhood of Tarrytown during the excited 
days of i860, formed Company H, of the 
Thirty-second Regiment. After seventeen 
years two dozen of that company survive. 
They are : 

Alfred I^awrence, first lieutenant and acting 
captain ; Thomas Rawcliffe, James Cropsey, 
Robert Meeker, John M. Felter, Frank Taxter, 
M. V. B. Bassett, Stephen Hammond, Sydney 
Martin, John Verplanck, Durbin See, Robert 
Bushell, Michael Donohue, Thomas Taxter, 
William Covert, Oscar McCoy, Edward Baker, 
Jeremiah Flannery, Florence Mahoney, John 
Perry, Michael Daley, William Evans, John 
Kenney, Charles Williamson. 



anD Sleeps Ibollovv 147 

Seventeen men from Tarrytown went out 
with the N. Y. Mounted Rifles : 

General C. C. Dodge, Major Wm. H. 
Schieflin,* Captain Edgar A. Hamilton, Adju- 
tant B. H. Engelke, Lieutenant Charles A. 
Varick,* Sergeant John H. Briggs, Sergeant 
Thomas Gearhart, Sergeant John Blatchley,* 
Corporal George L- Wiley,* Corporal James 
Portous, Corporal James B. Nation,* Abel 
Sherwood,* William Wallace, M. V. B. Romer, 
Peter See, Henry Palmer, F. D. Grittman. 

Other Union veterans whose names occur 
are : 

John R. Burd, ist N. Y. Cal. ; James Van 
Tassel, 6th N. Art. ; Edward See, 7th N. Y. 
Art. ; Abram Boyce, G, 7th N. Y. Art. ; Jos. 
J. M. Slagel, G, 7th N. Y. Art. ; B. F. Davis, 
2d, 7th N. Y. S. M. ; Patrick H. Bannon, K, 
69th N. Y. Vol. ; James Martin ; John Gilleo, 
95th N. Y. Vol. ; Michael Conelly ; John 
Van Tassell I, 95th N. Y. Vol. John Yocom, 
Caleb W. Storms, John lyafurgee, William 
Rodman, Joseph Baker, Jacob Green, John 
Mack, William Robinson. 

* Deceased. 



148 



Cbronicles of ^arrgtown 



Besides these there were a number of citizens 
who joined other organizations, and saw hot 
service on many Southern battlefields. Living 
or dead, we honor them all, remembering our 
debt to them. 





IX 



TO-DAY 



A FEW years ago somebody said — and no 
one has contradicted the statement — 
that the neighborhood between Sleepy Hollow 
and Irvington is the wealthiest spot of ground, 
in proportion to its population, in the world. 
You cannot throw a stone, said another, with- 
out hitting a millionaire. 

No words can express more forcibly the 
change which the hamlet of a century ago has 
undergone. Where the Dutch settlers hewed 
their homes out of the forest ; where the cow- 
boys and skinners ranged over the neutral terri- 
tory ; where the headless horseman found room 
to throw his pumpkin without hitting any one 
more important than poor Ichabod ; where 
Irving wandered through sylvan lanes and be- 

149 



I50 Cbroniclee of ^arrgtown 

side babbling brooks in search of legends and 
folk-lore — we have mansions, gardens, equi- 
pages, and a monstrous fine population. 

The Tarrytown of to-day is bounded on the 
north by the Rockefellers, John D. and Wil- 
liam, whose magnificent park-like estates are 
the admiration of a neighborhood that has 
grown used to grandeur ; on the south by a 
cluster of brilliants, among which the Gould 
place is not the least. Reference to the map 
will show the location of the most important or 
prominent of these country-seats, whose im- 
portance is derived both from their own beauty 
and the prominence of their owners. 

Tarrytown was incorporated in 1870. Its 
sister village in 1874. The present population 
of the two combined is estimated at between 
6741, as given by the eleventh (1890) census, 
and 7000. Between 1880 and 1890 there was 
an increase of over 1000. The greater part of 
the population consists of comfortable middle 
class and wealthy city people; the working 
class being a minority. The only manufactory 
of any importance which gives employment to 
operatives is the Rand Drill Works, at the foot 



ant) Sleeps Ibollow 151 

of Beekman Avenue, in North Tarry town. 
To discuss questions of water, sewerage, light- 
ing, etc., is not the purpose of this book. It 
is enough to say that the second is adequate 
and the first has not yet proved itself to be in- 
adequate to the needs of the place. 

The streets, which probably reach thirty-five 
or forty miles in the aggregate, are generally 
in good condition. 

The reader is referred to the carefully pre- 
pared map which accompanies this work for 
details relating to the location of private resi- 
dences, points of (modern) interest, houses of 
worship, public buildings, and streets. 

the; e;nd 




\ 




IHUDSON RIVER 



«S(.it old roads (i8th Century). Light lines represent new roads (19th Cen 
ed i this map. The figures denote the sites of interest, as follows : 

7. The Andr6 Captors' Monument. 

8. Site of Old Mott House (Katrina Van Tassc 
occupied by New High School. j 

Site of Couenhoven House, afterwards Mart 

Tavern. Now occupied by the Jones Buildl 

in " Tommv " Dean's Store and other old house 




IHUQSON RIVER 



Dark lines represc 
Only the principal roads and streets are named 

1. Old Manor House ( " Flypse's Castle " . 

2. Old Gram Mill, built about 1683-4 

3. Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. 
4 Site of ancient Saw Mill. 

5. Site of Sleepy Hollow School House 
6 David's House, visited by Washington. 



t old roads (i8th Century). LlRht lines represent new roads (19th Cent 
Q this map. The figrures denote the sites of interest, as follows : 

7. The Andr6 Captors' Monument. 

8. Site of Old Mott House (Katrina Van Tassel 

occupied by New High School. 
Q. Site of Couenhoven House, afterwards Marti 
Tavern. Now occupied by the Jones Buildh 
10. " Tommv " Dean's Store and other old houses 




INDEX 



Acherly, Lieutenant, 93 

Action at Tarry town, the, 90 

Advertisement of sale of the Beekraan farm, 137 

Albany Postroad, 139 

Albany Turnpike, 88 

Alipconc, 5 

Allen, Rev. John Knox, 117 

Anderson property, 136 

Andr6, Major John, 84-86; Adjutant General, 87; his 
ride, 93 ; capture of, 93 ; taken to Reed house 
after his capture, 136 ; brook, the, 136 ; monu- 
ment, 139 

Andre's, horse, 94 ; tree, 103, 104 

Andros, Governor, 8 

Archer, John, 87 

Arnold, Benedict, 84 ; his name execrated, 104 

Arnold's treachery, 86 



B 

Battle of White Plains, 133 

Bayard, Colonel, 14 ; account of grievances, 16 ; col- 
league of Flypse, 23 ; his name coupled with 
Captain Kidd, 25 

Bayles, Nathaniel, 127 

Bedford road, the, 88, 135, 138, 140, 141 

153 



154 IFnOci 

Beekman, additions to manor house, 34; farm adver- 
tised, 137 ; Avenue, 138, 151 

Gerard G., 31, 137, 138 

Mrs. Cornelia, 32, 73, 138 

Stephen D., 138 

Beekmans, the, 137, 138 

Beekmantown, 139 

Bell of old church, 45 

Bertholf, Rev. Guilliaume, 47 

Bolton, his account not reliable, 128 

Border raids, 80 

Boundaries of the Beekman farm, 137 

British, occupy heights, 82 ; frigates in the Hudson, 90 

Brombacher's burned factory, 115 

Brom Bones, 117, 134 

Brush, Rev. William, 59 

Bryant, Amada, 60 

Buckhout, Polly, 82 

Business increase after the war, 146 

Butler, Col. Richard, 82 

Buttermilk Hill, 85, 145 



Captors of Andr^, 104 

Carl brook, 60 

Carl's Mill, 140 

Charter Oak, the, 122 

Charter of liberties, 15 

Chestnut tree in 40-acre lot, 30 

Church, Christ, 69 

1st Reformed, 47, 57 

North, division of property with the South 

Church, 59 

Old Dutch, 39, 46, 60, 66 ; furniture of, 8 ; 

bell of, 9 ; structure of, 40 ; interior, 41 ; gallery, 
42 ; closed, 65 ; Washington rested at, 73 

South, 57 ; preaching in, 58 ; division of prop- 



erty, 59 

Civil war riots, the, 62 ; episodes, 145 
Cliff House, 129 
Clinton, Sir Henry, 78 



Hn^ci 155 

Cold Spring bridge, 88 

Comb, George, built the Dean house, 130 

Comb's, George, house, 127 

Committee of Safety, 75 

Confiscation of estate, 73 

Conklin, the Quaker, 142 

Constant, Judge, bought communion table, 47 

Constitutional Convention, 129 

Continental army passing manor-house, narrative of 

Mrs. Beekman, 33 
Cornbury, Governor of New York, 29 
Costumes of old times, 43 
Courtlandt, 48 

Courtship of Sleepy Hollow, 134, 135 
Couenhoven house, 84, 127 
Couenhoven's Edward, house, 130 
Cowboys, 132 
Crane, Ichabod, 134 

Croton, 7, 72 ; guides, 78; aqueduct, the, 143 
Cuffy Flypse, 105 

D 



Davids homestead, 85, 135 
Dean, John, 84, 136 

Thomas, house, 127, 130 

de Deux Fonts, his account of review, etc., 90, 92 
de Lancy, Oliver, 80, 134 
de Peyster, Frederick, 138 
de Revere, Abraham, 4, 7, 8, 28, 47 
Dervall, John, 22 

Destruction of sloops by the British, 91 
de Vries, 6 ; Margareta, 6 
Dobbs Ferry, 54 
Dominie, the, 51 
Draft riots, the, 62 
Du Bois, George, 57 ; his salary, 58 
Dunop's Yagers, 81 

Dutch, Reformed Church, 14 ; conservatism, 50 ; lan- 
guage superseded by Knglish, 52 
Dutchmen great church-goers, 46 
Dykeman's house, 127, 131 



156 IFndej 

E) 

Kcker, Wolfert, 44, 66, 67 ; a well-known character, 

44 ; his house known as Wolfert's Roost, 136 
English, first baptismal service in, 52 



Feet-washing in Pocantico, 51 

Ferris, Benson, 66, 67 

Mrs. Oliver, 67 

Oliver, 66 

Rev. John Mason, 58 

** Fire ! " Anecdote of Rev. Mr. Smith, 55 

Flypse, Adolphus, succeeds to estate, 25, 26 ; unmar- 
ried, 28 

Bva, 9, 31 ; married to Van Courtlandt, 29 

Frederic, 6 

Ivady Catharina, 22, 27-29 

Lady, Margarita, 27 

Vredryk, 5, 9, 13, 114; Hon. Vredryk, 7; his 

castle, 10, 13, 25, 37, 39, 132 ; his journeys to Tar- 
rytown, 10; the master, 11; traditionary, 14; as 
alderman, 15, 18; signature to certificate, 17; 
steals a march on Leisler, 17; thoroughness of 
his work, 19 ; death of his wife, 22 ; first Ameri- 
can chosen by popular vote to represent New 
York, 23 ; richest man in the colony, 23 ; as a 
merchant, 24 ; his name coupled with that of 
Kidd, 25,; buried under old church, 29; died in 
1702, 29 ; estate and tenants, 30; not a Patroon, 
31 ; iDuilds a dam, 105 

Flying Dutchman, the, 106, 108 

Fogal's, Abraham, house, 127 

Foote, Mr. occupied the old manor house, 33 

Fordham, 48, 53 

Fort Orange, 120 

Fremont, General, 69 

French, Annetje, 29 

army move from North Castle, 89 

Philip, 29 



UnDej 157 



Gould mansion, 128, 150 

Miss Helen, 128 

Greenburg, 53 

Grinnell, Hon. Moses H., 70 

H 

Hackensack, 3 

Hafenje, the, 76 

Half Moon, the, 106 

Hammond, or Hammon, Gen. James, 52, 74 ; and the 
Committee of Safety, 133 

Harlem, 48, 53 

Hawes, James, 85 

Lovine, 51 

Mrs. James, 36 

Solomon, 51, 52 

Headless Hessian, 114, 115 

Heath, General, Memoirs^ 77 

Highland turnpike, 138 

Hoe, Peter, 78 

Hollanders, 3 

Hopkins, Major, 78 

Houses of settlers, 3 

Hudson, Hendrick, 106 

Hulda, the witch, 97, 108, iii 

Hunt, Major, 87, 88 

Hunt's escape, 89 

Hurlburt, Captain of 2d Light Dragoons, 91 ; men- 
tioned in General Orders by Washington for his 
bravery at Tarrytown, 92 



Indians, domesticated, 13 

Irving, Washington, 67, 134 ; social life, 68, 69 ; Life 
^ Washington^ 75 



Jackson, Rev. John F., 53 
Jacob the Roman, 117 



I 



158 "Hn^ci 

JafFray, Edward S., 70 
Jay, John, the elder, 5 
Jones, Capt. Oscar, 63 
Jones, Eugene, 85 

K 

Kakeout, Kaakiat, or Kykuit, 76, 118 

Kidd, "William, commissioned to chase pirates, 24 

Kidd's, perversion, 25 ; rock, 25, 104 

Kill of Kitch Awong, 7 

Kingsbridge, 77 

King's Highway, no 

Kingsland, Ambrose, 33, 87 

Kingsland's round tower, 107 

Knyphausen, the raider, 132 

Kykuit voyager, the, 123 



Lady Margarita, 22 
Laudrine house, 136 

William, 57 

William B., 87 

Lee, Lighthorse Harry, 132 

Leisler, Jacob, 14-17 

Ivcislerian faction, 14 

Leni Lenapes, 98 

Leonard's, John, house, 127 

Lincoln, General, 77 

Livingstone, Colonel, gets Kidd a commisssion, 24 

Longwood road, 142, 143 

Lord Flypse, 4, 7 

Lord of the manor, 3 

M 

Main Street, 140 

Manor-house, the, building, 11, 12 
Manor of Philipsburg, 137 
Market road, Main Street, 140 
Martlings, Abram, 133 

and Van Wart's landing, 138 

Captain Daniel, 83, 126, 129 



ITnDei 159 



Martling's house, 129 

Isaac, house, 131 

Sergeant Isaac, 83 

the impetuous, 80 

- the Martyr, 82, 83 



Massacre of Sleepy Hollow, 82 

Memorial of thanks by the tenants of Philipsburg, 26 

Mill, construction, 19, 20 ; shingles of, 19 ; pond, dam, 

20 ; said to be a port of entry, 20 
Monroe, Mrs., 69 
Morgan, Geo. D., 69 
Mott homestead, 127 

Jacob, 134 

Mott's, Jacob, house, 131 
Mounted Rifles, 147 
Munson's tavern, 126 
Mutzelius, Domine, 43, 48 

N 

Napoleon, Louis, 70 

Negro exodus, 145 

Neperhan, the, 81 

Neutral ground, its hardships, 109 

New Amsterdam, 5 

North Tarrytown, 137 

Norton's, Colonel, attack on Young's house, 81 

Notable visitors at the Van Tassel tavern, 132 



O 



Onderdonk house, 129 
Jacob, 126 



Papist, Flypse charged with being a, 14 

Parsons, General, 79 

Patriotism of youth, 74 

Paulding, General William, 127, 128 

James Kirke, 47 

John, 85, 86 ; at Davids' place, 136 

Philip R., 129 

Paulding's house, 126, 128 



i6o ITn&ej 

Peekskill, 77 

Petticoat Lane, 81, 140 

Philips, Frederick, great-grandson of Vredryk F'lypse, 

26 ; on tablet, 45 

Miss, courted by George Washington, 31 

Philip, Judge of Supreme Court, 25 ; married 

a lady of Barbadoes, 25 

Sir Frederick, 31 ; collected his rents, 36 



Philipsburg, manor of, 6, 7, 18, 22, 25 ; confiscated, 
31 ; pulpit, 54 

Pocantico, the, 30, 51, loi, 141 ; manor-house, mill, 
and church built on, 8 ; purchase, 8 ; trout fish- 
ing, 60 ; Gazette y 126 ; bridge, 140 ; Hills, 142 

Point no Point, 106 

Population of villages, 150 

Post Reiter, der, 120 

Public money, 14 

Putnam, General Israel, 76, 132 

R 

Raven Rock, 111-113 

Raymond, M. D., authority, 83 

Redemptioners, 119 

Reed house, afterwards Landrine's, 127, 136 

Reform in church service, 50 

Report to the crown, 1691, 21 

Requa's, Gabriel, house, 131 

Jacob, house, 126 

Riggs brings letters of instruction to lycisler, 16, 17 

Riots, '63, 62 

Ritzema, Rev. Johannes, 43, 48 

Rockefeller, John D., 87, 136 

Rockefellers, John D. and William, 150 

Romer's, Captain, house, 79, 141 

Royal grant to Flypse, 5 



Saint, Nicholas 4 
Savings bank, the, 66, 67 
Sawmill River, the, 71 
Scales for weighing gold, 36 



Hn^ej i6i 

Scharf 's History of Westchester County^ 78 

Scbenck, Rev. John W., 58 

See, James S., 36 

Mrs. Bliza Ann, 117 

See's store, 88 

Segere, Anthony, 120 

Sheldon, Colonel of regiment at Dobbs Perry, 91 

Skinners, 132 

Slapering Hafen, 76 

Sloughter, Sir Henry, 17 ; arrival in New York, 18 

Slave-whipper, the, 142 

Slavery abolished, 142 

Sleepy Hollow, 68, 71, 142 ; mill, 141 ; road, 141, 143 

Smith, Rev. Thos. G., 53 ; his energy in establishing 
churches, 54 ; his burial place, 57 

Mrs. , a modern Xantippe, 56 

Smith's, Martin, tavern, 84, 127 

Smoke-house, 13 

SnifiSn house, 131 

Spook Rock, the, 96, 98, 102, 108 

Spuyten Duyvel, 7 

Stewart, Rev. Abel T., 59, 60-62, 65, 145 ; meets riot- 
ers, 63 ; calls rioters friends, 64 

Storm, Captain Jacob, 33 

Streets, extent of, 151 

Sugar House, 79 

Sunnyside, 136 ; glen, 67 ; rebuilt by Irving, 68 ; ivy, 
70 

Survivors of Company H, 32d Regiment, 146 



Tappan, 102 ; Zee, 106 ; British fire-ships in, 76 

Tarry town, purchase, 8 ; in Greenburg, 137 ; incor- 
porated, 150 

Tenantry of estate, 4 

Thirty-Second Regiment, 146 

Thrones, 49 

Todd, Rev. John A., his account of British landing at 
Tarrytown, 78 

Trading boat, 2 

Tr^nagh, Judah, ]i8 ; her ride, 121 

Try on, Governor, his cruelty, 79 



i62 IFnDej 

u 

Underbill, Nathaniel, 82, 83 
Union veterans, 147 



Valley of the Hudson, 141 
Van Courtlandt, 9, 14, 72 

Catherine, 22 

Cornelia, granddaughter of Cornelius, 32 

Jacobus, 31; signature to a certificate, 17; 

marries Kva Flypse, 29 

Katrina, on tablet, 45 

Olaff, 22 ; colleague of Flypse, 24 

Pierre, 75 

Stephanus, 16, 22 



Van Dam, Rambout, 123 
Van Houghten, 48 
Van Tassel house, 127 

Jacob, and his ** goose gun," 66 

Katrina, 135 

Peter and Cornelius, their houses burned by 

the British, 79 
Van Tassel's, Elizabeth, tavern, 80, 87, 131 
Van Voorhees, Rev. Stephen, 49, 50, 53; baptizes Lo- 

vine Hawes in English, 52 
Van Wart, Isaac, 85 

W 

War for Independence, 71 

War-ships on the Hudson, 75, 76 

Washington, General, 77, 132 ; Life of, 70 ; mentions 

old church, 73 ; reviews the allies, 89 ; diary for 

178 1, 92 
Water Street, 83 

Wayne, Anthony, ** Madcap," 132 
Wealth of Tarrytown, 149 
Webb, General James Watson, 69 
Weber property, 140 
Westchester County, 7 , 
Whale-boats, patrol, 72 



IFnDej 



163 



Wharf, the, 10 

White Plains, convention, 76; road, 81, 140; old 

road, 87 ; battle of, 135 
William and Mary, 8 
Williams, David, 85 
Wilson, Rev. Joseph, 58 
Wolfert's Roost, 44, 66 
Woman of the Cliff, the, 113 



Yerks, Van Wart, and Strong captured, 92 
Yonkers manor-house, 9 
York town, 51 
Youngs house, 81 





t"^ 



K"^ 



:^ 






\A<^ * 



"^A V*' 



\0 o . 




c- 



■^ 



<^ 




i> ». 



0^ ^ 



^\ 






^^, v^ 



.\ -^ 



'D, ^ , X 






'_-> 



•^ 



o 0^ 







^J. <P 






V' 



.<^ 












i ,x^^"- 







» 






^c^ V ^ ^ -^ '^ / 



^ 









\ * ^ > 









1 V. ./:':. \;^ 



V' 



,^v <v,^ ». V.«^# ♦ *: 









<<^ '' ^ * <■ ^ ^ A 



^^ v^' 



Oo 



=^0^ 



"^A V^ 



o 



-' "P^ T- (O 9=1 * -^ \^ 



%■ ,A<*' 



-^.^x 



'<^<i- 



-.s-i % 



x'^ '^ ^ , V -^ ,G „ s c <1- ^ » <> ' A 





LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 221 159 2 






